


Under Strange Stars

by Idrils_Scribe



Series: Under Strange Stars [1]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Action/Adventure, Badass Glorfindel, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character(s) of Color, Choice of the Peredhel, Coming of Age, Elves, Epic Battles, Family, Gap Filler, Gen, Guerrilla Warfare, Half-Elves, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Nazgûl | Ringwraiths, OCC/Original Camel Character, Pre-War of the Ring, Rescue Missions, Slavery, The Haradrim, Third Age, Umbar, Ósanwe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-28 23:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14460465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idrils_Scribe/pseuds/Idrils_Scribe
Summary: Barely a long-year after the Last Alliance all is not well in Imladris. Elrond's household has been dealt a crippling blow: a very young Elrohir has disappeared. After decades of false leads he is found in the Far South of Middle-Earth. Can Glorfindel rescue the House of Earendil once more? His task is not an easy one: Elrohir has no memory of who he was, and little interest in leaving his people's fight against the Black Númenóreans of Umbar ...A huge thanks to my beta, the irreplaceable Dawn Felagund, who made this tale at least twice as good as it was originally. All remaining mistakes are mine.





	1. Chapter 1

 

In the end their answer came from an unfortunate Arnorian sailor by the name of Ruhiren. It was terrifying, Erestor thought, that the final piece of this puzzle that was the long search for the lost son of Elrond and Celebrían should come from a man so sad and damaged.

  
Elrond’s chief counsellor met the Mortal in a run-down watering hole in one of the seedier districts of Fornost. They were far indeed from the polish and splendour of King Valandil’s court.

  
Ruhiren ordered a leather flask of thin, sour beer, something he clearly had done far too often of late. Erestor kept his hood up, not trusting the greasy, tangled mess he’d allowed his hair to turn into for this secretive errand to fully hide his ears. He was unsure how much Mortal eyes would discern in the reddish half-light of smoldering grease-lamps. Ruhiren returned with the beer and two wooden mugs. As he set them down the scars from slavers’ manacles on his wrists were clear to see.

Unwilling to spend more time in these surroundings than necessary, Erestor did away with pleasantries.

“Did you see the child we seek in Umbar, at the slave market?”

  
A spark of cleverness remained in the Mortal’s eyes. He knew the question for the trap it was.

“No child did I see, but a man grown. He’s been there for many years, as you know well. And he wasn’t at the market either.”

Erestor remained silent, carefully opening his mind to the alien pitch and rhythm of the Mortal’s thoughts. He kept eyes trained on the man’s face in his effort to discern falsehood. He found none. Ruhiren’s story was the truth, or at least what the man believed to be true.

“I met him after I’d been freed. It was in the deep desert. He’s one of the Haradrim army of freed slaves fighting the Lords of Umbar. He told me he was a freed Northern slave himself.”

“Why do you believe he is the one I seek?”

“I’ve seen the King a few times, from afar. It is said our Valandil is a relative of your Elf-Lord. The one I speak of has that same look. Bears the family resemblance, so to speak.”

“How would I find him, if I were to go there?”

Ruhiren laughed bitterly. “The matter is as simple as travelling to the deep desert. It is the domain of the Haradrim. Once you enter it they will find you. They might lead you to your lost prince if you somehow convince them you aren’t a spy from Umbar. If not, your Immortal life will end then and there. I wouldn’t bother asking the Umbarians. They will hang you just for speaking his name.”

“Which is?”

“They call him Thanak, of the House of the Four Winds”

“So he does have kin there?”

“Oh no, there are so many freed slaves without a home to return to, they have started a House of their own. Bearing that name is a statement that he has no kin.”

“Maybe it would be easier with you as my guide?”

Once more Ruhiren laughed his mirthless laugh.

“That desert is a place of terror, Master Elf. The Umbarians are cruel as vipers, the locals are more than a little mad, and every surviving dark creature that good King Elendil flushed out of Mordor crawled down there to hide. I’ve had the good fortune to make it back home after winding up there once, and I won’t tempt the Valar twice.”

“Not even for silver coin?”

Ruhiren put down his mug, wiping his mouth and wafting an eye-watering smell of stale alcohol towards Erestor, who bravely kept from flinching.

“Not even for the Royal scepter. If you think my tale worth your reward, then pay me what you promised. If not, at least pay for the beer.”

\---

Pacing the portico of the Last Homely House was beneath the dignity of its Lady. Nonetheless Celebrían did just that as she waited for Erestor to return from his inquiry in Fornost.  
Elrond had sensed him entering the hidden valley an hour ago, and all that time she had walked up and down the width of the house like a caged lioness, her skirts rustling behind her as she strode under the elegantly vaulted arches. On the lower branches of the great beech tree shedding its leaves in the courtyard she could make out the dark shape of Elladan, waiting for possible news of his twin as anxiously as she was. Elrond was inside, mindlessly rearranging the clutter on his work-table and attempting to hide his agitation.

  
Over the past forty years there had been many days like this one, and always they had been followed by such bitter disappointment. Elrohir being kept prisoner by wild hillfolk, abducted into the East, buried under such-and-such oak tree. The stories had all been dead ends, no trace ever found of the youngest twin or his escort. As the years wore on, the stream of fortune-seekers spinning fancy tales in hope of earning the reward offered by the Lord of Imladris had worn down to a trickle, then stopped entirely.

Until a few weeks ago, when word reached Imladris from Elrond’s envoy at the court of King Valandil in Fornost. Nénuwen had written to her Lord and Lady dutifully, but with her usual amount of level-headed scepticism. Her letter had painted the strange tale of a missing sailorman’s unhoped for return from the Far South with a wild tale of being captured by corsairs, sold into Umbar as a slave, and making a miraculous escape by way of the deep desert. In that strange and wild place he claimed to have met the one mortals in Arnor now called the "Lost Elf-Prince". That very day Erestor travelled to Fornost to investigate, not through their official channels at court but discreetly. And so the Lady of Imladris paced as she awaited the return of Elrond’s chief counsellor and spymaster on this radiant autumn afternoon.

  
Erestor had barely dismounted when she spun him around to face her so she could look into his eyes to extract every last bit of information she could from his mind. Celebrían had inherited much of her mother’s capability of mind-opening. Then and there, she knew. With a small sound between a sob and a sigh she embraced Erestor as he stood there in his travel-stained, ill-made mannish clothes. Her old friend of two ages returned the embrace, while looking at a hastily approaching Elrond over her shoulder.

  
Celebrían turned around and offered her husband a single memory, wafer-thin and fragile. It was what all of Erestor’s ages of experience in mind-opening had managed to extract from a mortal mind neither equipped nor suitable for such sharing. An image, its periphery hazy and dreamlike but gaining sharpness towards the centre where the dark shape of a face took form. It was covered in cloth, a turban perhaps. The only feature properly visible were the eyes: grey as the sea, and within them the remembrance of starlight. She could feel, rather than hear, both Elrond and Elladan gasp, as struck by the enormity of this moment as she herself.

They convened in Elrond’s council chamber as soon as Erestor returned from a quick detour to the baths, his sable hair drying in damp waves as it spilled down his usual immaculate robe. Celebrían looked around the bright, vaulted room with its round table, finely inlaid by one of the Noldorin craftsmen in Imladris. Elrond, Erestor and Glorfindel were seated around it in various states of agitation.

Someone had to travel to the Far South in all haste. Who, exactly, was the subject of heavy discussion. Elrond insisted on making the journey to retrieve Elrohir himself, while Glorfindel and Erestor protested that he could not risk his own life, or --even more catastrophic--  risk Vilya falling into the hands of the Enemy. So very rarely they mentioned the very existence of Elrond’s ring aloud, even in this room. It was the reason Elladan had not been allowed to attend, despite his protests. Their son--sons!--had not yet come of age, and Elladan had been deliberately kept in the dark about the true extent of his father’s responsibilities. Only nine Elves knew the whereabouts of the Three Rings. Two of those had passed into Mandos’ halls, and four of the ones remaining were now sitting at Elrond’s table.

The debate went around in circles until Elrond silenced Erestor mid-sentence with a clearly frustrated gesture and looked at Celebrían. Despite his composure, she could tell his control was fraying at the edges and that he was in fact rather closer to tears than he’d have Erestor and Glorfindel believe.

  
“My Lady, what say you? You have heard us all out several times and you have doubtlessly seen much. Give us the benefit of your wisdom.”

Celebrían looked at her husband in the fading light of early evening. Decades of grief, concern and desperation had dulled his bright spirit and taken the gleam from his eyes. He reminded her of the way he had been newly returned from Dagorlad, still deep in mourning over Gil-galad. Wise, he certainly was, but she acutely saw how his emotions in this matter had overpowered his judgement. No good would come from it if he travelled to Harad, and too much would be risked.

  
She took a moment to straighten out her words before speaking them aloud, and from the corner of her eye noticed Glorfindel leaning forward in anticipation. His hands were twiddling with the edges of a hastily procured map of the Far South, earning him a peeved look from Erestor. The ancient warrior had been Elrond’s strategic advisor and the commander of Imladris’ military force since his miraculous return from Valinor. While initially awed by the momentous importance of his mission in Middle-earth, Celebrían had found the Elf behind the historical reputation to be kind and good-natured despite his sometimes brazen and cocky manner. His loyalty to Elrond as the last descendant of the line of Turgon in Middle-earth ran deep. It assuaged her sadness over having to tell Elrond that she sided with his advisors in the matter. On hearing her words, he buried his face in his hands. Only she knew how hard he fought to keep the tears burning behind his eyelids from falling.  
When he finally looked up, his ever practical nature had taken over. There was a campaign to organise.

\---

When Glorfindel left Imladris mere days later he had been disguised with all the considerable art at his and Elrond’s disposal. Though still fair to the eye, his golden majesty and the light of Valinor in his face were veiled. He’d been outfitted in mannish clothes and mail, a serviceable but slightly dented sword at his side. His mount was a dun-coloured pack horse, a far cry from the white destriers he normally chose.

  
He rode for the Grey Havens, with letters from Elrond to Círdan requesting passage to Umbar. He made record time, reaching the Havens before the first winter storms.  
Glorfindel knew Círdan well from the years he had spent in Lindon on his return to Middle-earth. In those days the return of a legend reborn to walk Ennor once more as a symbol of defiance to the Enemy had inspired many. On this occasion the Lord of the Havens received Glorfindel and his message with equal measures of relief and concern for the sheer distance and complexity of the task before him. Despite the circumstances Círdan couldn’t help but appreciate the irony of the resplendent Lord of the Golden Flower, who normally wouldn’t dress in silver embroidery if he could get gold, having to play the part of a rugged Mortal traveler.

  
Without delay a ship was outfitted and crewed with eager volunteers from Círdan’s folk. Elrond was well-loved among them, a central figure of the High King Gil-galad’s court in Lindon for almost an age. All other work in the shipyards ceased as many skilled hands readied victuals, rigging and sails in record time, allowing them to set sail only a week after Glorfindel rode through the Haven’s gate. Círdan captained the grey ship himself.

Their journey south was so blessed with favourable winds, that it was as if Ossë and Uinen themselves sought to bring home their beloved Eärendil’s lost grandson.

Once they reached Southern part of the Bay of Belfalas the time had come to make a difficult decision about Glorfindel’s landing place. It was impossible for an Elvish ship to openly approach the Southern harbours where Black Númenóreans ruled, their worship of Sauron still as ardent as before his defeat at the hands of the Last Alliance.

Glorfindel had no choice but to land in Harad secretly, in the dead of night. Ruhiren had told Erestor about meeting Elrohir in a lawless desert province called Kes Arik, home to nomadic tribes and an army of liberated slaves resisting the Lords of Umbar amid the ever-shifting sand dunes. Nowhere in the lands of the West existed a map of that place. From an ancient sea-chart drawn when Númenor still stood, Círdan picked a deserted stretch of arid coastline to the south of Umbar, two days’ ride from the town of Pellardur.

From the sea Umbar looked as unforgiving as Ruhiren’s tales. As far as Glorfindel’s eyes could see ochre sand and rocks stretched to the horizon without a blade of grass in sight.  
Cirdan had voiced his misgivings about what he called abandoning Glorfindel alone in this desolate and hostile land with so few clues to Elrohir’s whereabouts. Glorfindel insisted on going forward as planned. And so it came to pass that Círdan rowed back to the grey ship, leaving the Balrog-slayer and his dun mare alone on a dark, wind-swept beach under strange stars.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

Once more Glorfindel lifted his half-empty waterskin to drink the smallest possible sip. On the arid plains, rough sage-brush stretched to the horizon. The ever-present wind seemed straight from a furnace, parching his throat. A harsh copper sun glared down on the caravan of camels led by slaves on foot. Their Black Númenórean masters rode high above the scorching sand. In Pellardur Glorfindel had paid most of the silver Elrond had generously supplied him with to join this caravan of traders on its way to Zimrenzil. That city, in the deep desert, was the last stronghold of Umbar’s empire, teetering on the edge of wild, empty Kes Arik.

  
Thus far, the empire’s penchant for violence and savagery had made a lasting impression on Glorfindel. Pellardur had been a dust-filled trading town. Its most prominent feature was the cavernous slave market, where chained men, women and children were paraded and auctioned off like cattle. The mere sight of such violence and degradation from one child of Ilúvatar to another made the ancient Elda feel contaminated by the uncleanliness, the wickedness of it. It was a bitter irony, he felt, that if Orcs could not live in these sun-lands, the feeble race of Men should obey Sauron’s will so eagerly that they’d turn to behave just like them.

  
The strong military presence the Lord Zimrathôn of Umbar retained here reminded him that these slaves tended to rebel against their masters with equal violence. The various amputated body parts on display on walls, towers and other landmarks in the city had been a clear message from the Black Númenóreans to their slaves about the consequences of revolt.

The Númenóreans brought that same attitude with them on the desert journey. Obedience was enforced with whips and the ever-present threat of the heavily armed imperial soldiers protecting the caravan. At the sight of the lash-marks on the emaciated men leading his camel, Glorfindel dreaded the possibility that the sweet, quicksilver child he had once known as Elrohir had made his way to Kes Arik in a similar manner.

On the Southern horizon, the mountains grew closer. The Númenóreans became restless. They spoke in fearful tones of raids by Haradi rebels in the area. As the caravan entered the foothills, Glorfindel could feel it, too. All his ages of experience as a warrior screamed that there were hostile eyes on the rocky hilltops, and whispers of their approach ran through the valleys. Despite the oppressive dread of waiting for the inevitable attack he felt a spark of excitement. Whoever was lying in wait to ambush the caravan, there was a chance that they would know of a grey-eyed man by the name of Thanak.

They came at night. Glorfindel had to admire the skill and strategy the Haradrim employed in setting their trap. The merchants were cleverly brought to set up camp for the night on a valley floor that was nigh impossible to defend against attack from above. A rockslide, doubtlessly prepared for them days in advance, had closed off the way forward and it was too late in the day to turn the caravan around and return to higher ground. During the whole journey through the desert mountains Glorfindel had known they were watched closely, even though their scouts neither saw nor heard any sign of Haradrim raiders. A leaden silence lay over the canyons, broken only by the stirring of small animals indifferent to the violence of Men.

  
Glorfindel decided not to warn his companions about the imminent attack. After what he had witnessed of their cruelty he felt no sympathy for them. Their defeat would make it more likely that Glorfindel could continue his journey to Kes Arik in the company of someone who could lead him to Elrohir. Glorfindel put out his bedroll on the edge of camp and feigned sleep. When silence descended he slipped between the guards unseen, into the desert. He changed the cloak he'd bought in Pellardur for one of Grey Elven make brought from Imladris. To his great satisfaction it seamlessly blended with the moonlit ochre rocks.

  
He made a detour through a small side canyon to reach the hillcrest above the sleeping camp. He could easily make out the guards moving between the tents and the small campfires below, where he had lain not an hour ago. Glorfindel would have laughed if his life hadn’t depended on silence. Where the heavy-footed Umbarians in their frantic searching had found only frustration and empty desert, the sharpness of Elvish senses and three ages of military experience easily succeeded. He had found the Haradrim.

There were about fifty of them, and probably a similar number on the other side of the valley. All were dressed in flowing robes, turbans and face-veils the color of the desert sand. They wore no mail as far as Glorfindel could see, but were armed to the teeth with spears, scimitars and metal crossbows, probably looted from earlier raids on Umbar. Their clothes might be all alike, but Glorfindel had never seen a more diverse collection of warriors, doubtlessly representing the Umbarian fondness of exotic slaves. There were slightly more men than women, what was visible of their faces ranging from almost coal-black to Edain-pale. Some had the slanted eyes of the Far East, others were light-eyed, probably freed Northerners like Ruhiren. He watched for a time, identifying their captain as a tall, dark-skinned man whose grey eyebrows betrayed his age.

  
Glorfindel silently crept among them, hidden by his Wood-Elf cloak, until he found the man he sought. Only then did he reveal himself. To the captain’s credit he did not make a sound when Glorfindel seemingly materialized out of the sand at his feet. A quick gesture, and the Elf found himself surrounded by spear points from every side. He raised both his empty hands.

“Hold your spears, I come in peace.”

The Haradrim captain looked him over, the whites of his clever eyes sharply contrasting what was visible of his veiled ebony face.

  
“You are a Northerner, but neither from Umbar, nor Gondor. Something else entirely, I believe. Something I have not seen before.”

The man spoke Númenórean with a heavy accent Glorfindel had not heard before, probably from the far south.

“You are not a slave, and never were one, if I am to judge. Before you crept out of their camp I saw you riding a camel with the Umbarians while our people walked the dust beside. You bore no whip though.  For that, I will allow you to speak for yourself before I decide the manner of your death.”

  
Even though the Mortal was incapable of seeing into his mind, Glorfindel knew that this man would know a lie for what it was. He would not waste a moment to execute him if he judged it necessary.  
Left with no other way, Glorfindel simply told him the truth. He spoke of Elrond, Imladris, the North, Elrohir’s abduction and the long search for the child now grown to manhood. He even named Ruhiren as the one who had put him on Elrohir’s trail towards Kes Arik.

  
When he was done, the captain’s eyes showed his doubt. He was not a cruel man by nature. Glorfindel sensed that he, too, had children somewhere, maybe lost to the chaos and destruction that had engulfed so much of Harad. But he was no fool. The Haradrim’s chances against the Númenóreans this night were already balanced on a knife’s edge. They could afford no mistakes. To leave a potential traitor alive in their midst might be the last one they ever made.

  
Before the captain could voice the order that would end Glorfindel’s life in Middle-earth for a second time, a fine-boned Easterling woman interrupted him. Despite his predicament, Glorfindel noted with relief that among these people a commander’s authority clearly did not have the same tyrannical quality as with their Númenórean counterparts.

  
“He tells us at least some truth, Amuk,” she said. “I once knew a Northerling by the name of Ruhiren. He was a captured sailor, and did return to the North two years ago.”

  
Another man interjected that the time for conversation was running short, pointing at the stars to show the appointed hour for the attack had come.

The captain, whose name was indeed Amuk, came to a decision.

“Take his pack, his weapons, and search him well for any he has hidden. Then tie him and leave him here until we return. We will decide what to do with him in the morning.”

  
Glorfindel had to bite back his anger and disgust at the humiliating treatment. There was no way forward but to swallow his pride and allow two of the Mortal warriors, who he could easily have bested with his hands tied behind his back had he wanted to, to do their captain’s bidding. Glorfindel’s face remained impassive as they patted him down, even going as far as shaking out his boots. Inwardly he could have spat at their unmelodious chattering in what had to be Haradi, and the sickening smell of their long-unwashed clothes. He was tied securely, his face towards a rock face so he couldn’t observe the course of the fight.

  
They left him utterly defenseless and alone. Glorfindel knew his life now depended on the fortune of the Haradrim in the coming battle. If they were defeated and killed by the Umbarians he would die of thirst where he lay, forgotten without a chance of being found before he was reduced to sun-bleached bones. He only just managed to keep panic at bay, reciting a prayer to Elbereth over and over in his mind to keep it from racing. After what he estimated was less than an hour, he heard the Haradi attack on the Númenórean camp begin. From the sounds of the battle he could not discern which turn it was taking. He heard no battle cries from either side, only the clatter of steel on steel, screams of anger, fear and pain, and the panicked roars of disturbed camels running amok.

  
By morning the fighting had died down. As the sun rose many voices sounded over the mountains with a single call: “Ak-ren ghab, Ak-ghab Eru!”

  
Glorfindel did not understand the Haradrim tongue, but the mere fact that victory was announced in a language other than Númenórean sent a wave of relief through him. He waited for another hour, his tension mounting again. Amuk did not strike him as the kind of man who’d leave a bound prisoner to die. The question was whether Amuk had survived the battle, and if not, what his successor would choose to do with the strange Northerner. Glorfindel was grateful for his dark musings to be interrupted by approaching footsteps on the gravel behind him. The same warriors who had tied him up had come to retrieve him, looking the worse for wear. Their robes and veils were blood-splattered and torn in places. One was sporting a black eye slowly swelling shut. Despite their injuries they seemed in high spirits, excitedly talking among themselves in Haradi while untying Glorfindel’s bonds just enough to enable him to walk. Without speaking to Glorfindel they led him downhill towards the campsite on the valley floor.

  
When he caught sight of it in the harsh white light of the desert morning, Glorfindel could not help a pang of sadness for such loss of life despite his earlier antipathy for the Umbarians. His former travel companions had been killed, down to the last man. The only people left alive in the valley were the Haradrim warriors and the now freed slaves, who had set to enthusiastically plundering their former masters’ corpses of weapons, clothes and armour. The smell of death and bodies starting to rot in the heat was overpowering. Even the creatures of the desert seemed to rejoice in the carnage. Glorfindel had never seen such an amount of carrion-flies on any of his many Northern battlefields. Overhead, large vultures slowly circled through the steel blue sky waiting for the Men to leave them to their feast.

  
To one side of the camp the pack-camels and their precious cargo of wheat, wine, olive oil and dried fish were being gathered by Haradrim warriors, loudly counting and rejoicing in their bounty. Amuk was in the remains of what once was the Númenórean caravan leader’s tent, busy tallying what gold and precious stones had been looted.

  
On Glorfindel’s approach, the Haradi captain carefully finished what he was doing and gathered his treasure in a leather purse, which disappeared somewhere under the flowing robes. Amuk looked Glorfindel in the eye, trying to read his response to the slaughter he’d just witnessed and detect signs of mourning for the Númenóreans. He found none.

  
“Master Glorfindel, as you can see we were fortunate this night. Therefore you are, too. We have spoken about you at length in the past hour. Our decision is to let you live. We believe your tale, which has garnered some sympathy among my people. You will ride with us to our base in Urad An-Khalid. There is one of our folk who might fit your description. He rides with a company like this one. Where they are at this moment, I do not know. You may learn more in Urad, Eru willing.”

  
Glorfindel bowed and thanked him before asking “Am I your prisoner?”

  
Amuk looked at the ropes that held the Elf.

“You have no experience in the desert, nor skill with camels. We will keep your pack, weapons and waterskin. Walking away from us without those means certain death. Unless you are a fool, that knowledge will be shackle enough for you.”

  
With that, he gestured for his warriors to untie Glorfindel.

“Now there is much work to be done, and we’d be glad for your help.”

His guards, whose names he now learned were Samak, a quiet Haradrim, and a woman named Metalan. She was a freed slave from the far Southlands, her skin so dark it had an almost bluish tinge. They set him to the grisly work of stripping the dead Númenóreans. Glorfindel almost refused out of sheer indignation. He was intimately familiar with the sight and smell of violent death, but as a commander had never been present for the inevitable disposal of bodies that took place after a battle’s end. On some level he was aware that even Elven warriors would have to lower themselves to dragging around the bodies of their fallen enemies, be they Men or Orcs, but for him this was a disgusting first. The one small mercy was that no tale of this episode was likely to reach Imladris. He would never live it down if Erestor ever caught wind of it.

  
Most Umbarians appeared to have fallen in battle, but others had clearly been executed afterwards. The corpses were left to rot where they fell, stark naked as a message to future Númenórean caravans of who this desert belonged to. When he next looked up the Haradrim were saddling their own camels, brought in from a distant valley where they’d been hidden during the raid. They were majestic animals, taller than those the Númenóreans had used, with an aloof and defiant air about them reminiscent of their riders. The former slaves had been outfitted with their dead masters’ gear and were now in their saddles. Samak took Glorfindel behind him on his own camel.

  
Glorfindel soon got used to the rhythms of desert travel. The Haradrim constantly guarded him, but he was treated kindly. They were not unlike the Sindar in their love of the nighttime and the stars. The company slept under tarps during the day’s heat, their camels left to roam the vicinity of the camp and graze on the sparse vegetation with their legs hobbled. As the sun dipped to the western horizon, a meal of sticky dried dates and rock-hard waybread was handed out, along with a ration of water for drinking and soaking the bread. The camels would receive none. When Glorfindel remarked on that he was told these animals could go without drink for a fortnight before thirst would limit their use. As the sun set the Haradrim lined up their camels in a single file and rode all night, navigating by the stars. Even Elvish horses would have broken their legs riding at speed in darkness over the rocky, wayless county. Camels appeared to have surpassing night vision. In the long dark hours the Haradrim often raised their voices in song. Glorfindel had not yet learned enough Haradi to understand the words, but the haunting melodies awakened visions of boundless freedom in wild, unconquered lands under open skies.

  
Amuk was a pleasant travel companion. He was not a talkative man by nature it seemed, but cheerful enough, inviting Glorfindel to share most morning meals with him. The Southron could not have been more than fifty years old if Glorfindel was any judge of Mortal faces, but he had the hard cleverness that only came from long experience leading warriors into battle. News from outside the desert was hard to come by for the Haradrim. Amuk cared little for Glorfindel’s tidings from Arnor, which he referred to as "the snow-lands". The world north of the mouths of Anduin was no more than a distant and wondrous rumour to the inhabitants of the deep desert, utterly without relevance to their own lives. Amuk was keen to hear all Glorfindel could tell him about Pellardur and its garrison and the state of Gondor’s military. The Haradrim felt great kinship with Gondor’s ceaseless war against Umbar, considering the enemy of their enemy a friend. Glorfindel gladly let himself be questioned in exchange for being taught the language and the customs of the Haradrim.

  
Customs that were strange indeed. On the first night of their journey Glorfindel convivially asked Amuk’s father-name, only to be met with the stony silence of insult. After Glorfindel’s baffled apology Amuk softened, and explained. Most of the Haradrim were former Umbarian slaves, escaped or set free in raids. Parentage was a source of pain rather than pride, a subject unfit for public discussion. The sadness of not knowing their begetters, inconceivable as it seemed to Glorfindel, was considered preferable to an Umbarian father’s hated name, a permanent reminder of the torment he must have inflicted on their enslaved mother. It was a strange curse, Glorfindel mused, this Mannish ability to breed like Orcs whether the resulting children were wanted or not, yet another unbridgeable gap between Mortals and the Firstborn. Those slaves imported from distant lands had even less cause to dwell on what half-remembered kinships lay behind them, far beyond their reach in both distance and time given the briefness of their Mortal years.

  
Amuk saw rather blessing than curse, it seemed. “I am only of myself, Master Glorfindel, and my place in this world I wrested from Umbar with my own two hands. What other source of pride does a Man need?”

Glorfindel, descended from a house of princes, did not possess the cruelty it would take to gainsay him.

  
Not that the Haradrim would care overmuch for princes, it seemed. Now that Glorfindel had learned more of their language he understood the battle cry he had heard for the first time over the carnage of the Umbarian caravan. The Haradrim defiantly called it out each morning as every member of their company turned east to kneel before the rising sun, turning their backs on the West.

“No Lord but God. No God but Eru.”

  
As they traveled south the signs of war were all around them. Whenever the company came upon a well or watering hole there were charred remains of straw and clay huts, sometimes with the bones of the inhabitants still in them. Whether they were Númenóreans raided by the Haradrim or that situation reversed, Glorfindel could not tell. It did not seem to matter very much. Whatever small fields were suitable for planting had clearly been untilled for some time, which explained why the Haradrim had been more excited about their plundered wheat than the gold. During their journey they did not meet a living soul.

  
That changed on a dark night when a shroud of wind-swept dust blotted out the stars. They had been making slow progress with their navigation so hindered. Suddenly Glorfindel became aware of the distant sound of other camels behind them, their steps out of synchrony with the caravan. He alerted Samak, who quickly rode to the front to warn Amuk. The caravan reassembled itself in battle order, every eye trained on the dusty horizon behind them. Glorfindel with his Elvish sight was the first to spot their pursuers. There were five camels following their tracks, the veiled riders dressed in Haradrim fashion. When he described this to Amuk the man relaxed slightly.

  
As the approaching riders became visible to mortal eyes a wave of relief swept through the company. These visitors were clearly well-known. How the Haradrim managed to identify each other with their desert-coloured robes and face-veils all alike, Glorfindel could not tell. As they came within earshot welcoming calls went up. A smiling Amuk gave Glorfindel a pat on the back.

“Eru favours you, Glorfindel. It seems He seeks to spare you the remainder of the ride to Urad. The one we call Thanak is among our guests.”

  
“Which one?” Glorfindel asked.

  
“The one in front, their captain. They seem to ride at haste, with a message probably. I would hear his news first. Then you have my leave to speak with him and learn if he is the one you seek. Even if he is not, he might still be of aid to you. He travels far and hears many things.”

  
As the first rider approached Amuk rode a small way to meet him with a water skin in his hands. Samak trailed behind, allowing Glorfindel to watch. Amuk and Thanak made gestures of respect and greeting.

  
“Eru bless the camel that carried you here,” Amuk proclaimed in Haradi, holding out the water.

  
“And Eru bless the hands that pass me this water,” Thanak answered before taking a small ritual sip.

To do so he had to lower his veil.

  
Glorfindel felt his heart stop for an instant before blood came rushing back into his veins. The face was Elladan's.


	3. Chapter 3

At a sign from Amuk and Thanak, both the caravan and their guests made their camels kneel and dismounted. They would make camp for the day in this place. Both captains walked off among the strewn boulders that surrounded the camp to discuss the news Elrohir--no, Thanak--had brought.

Glorfindel waited at the edge of camp, drowning out the bustling of people and animals around him as he paced, suddenly agitated beyond what meditation could suppress. He had to restrain himself from following them, turning Thanak around and baring his face, if only to satisfy himself that hope wasn’t playing cruel tricks on him, that this was indeed Elrohir and not some unfortunate young Man of Gondor with the look of the Elf-friends. He strained his ears but could not understand the hushed conversation they had in rapid Haradi. All it conveyed was concern, an urgency with a hint of despair. Whatever the Haradrim intended with this strange war without armies, if war it was, it seemed to go ill. Over an hour passed and the eastern sky had brightened when they returned.

  
Thanak had clearly been told already of how Amuk’s company had acquired a strange Northerner on an even stranger quest. As he approached Glorfindel his eyes gave away nothing of his inner thoughts. He was on the tall side for a Mortal, but smaller and slighter of frame than Glorfindel. He moved with the grace and purpose of a warrior, and was heavily armed. A scimitar hung sheathed from his hip, a crossbow and quiver on his back in a leather holster. The desert-tinted garb of the Haradrim showed only his tanned hands and a small slit of face from which sea-grey eyes now scrutinized Glorfindel. The depth of his gaze eerily reminded Glorfindel of Galadriel in her youth.

  
Thanak spoke Haradi. “Greetings, Northerling. I am told you are looking for me.”

The faint trace of Elven fairness that remained in his voice even in such an alien language removed all doubt. Relief flooded Glorfindel. Despite Ruhiren’s grim warnings about this desert’s tendency to turn all things to darkness, it seemed the Valar had nonetheless seen fit to smooth out Glorfindel’s path to fulfilling his mission.

  
As Thanak sat down on the sand beside him, Glorfindel undid his own headdress, revealing his face. Very carefully, his back turned to the others, he briefly released some of the artful enchantments that veiled his normal appearance so Elrohir would see him as he had been in Imladris. Glorfindel could not see much of his face, but he heard the hitch in Elrohir’s breath, and for a moment his carefully maintained guard slipped to reveal shock … and recognition … before his eyes became expressionless once more.

  
A long silence descended. Glorfindel left the initiative to Elrohir, feeling the momentousness of this occasion and the delicate balance between hope and doubt in the young Half-Elf’s mind.  
When he finally spoke it was not in Sindarin as Glorfindel had hoped, but accentless Númenórean.

“So at least this part of what Amuk tells me is true. It seems I somehow knew you, long ago.”

  
“Your father sends me to bring you home. We have searched for many years. At last we have found you.”

  
“I have no memory of him,” Thanak interrupted him. “What little I know of my childhood before I was captured does not allow me to tell whether you speak the whole truth. I can see no falsehood in you. That said, your mind is different from any I have encountered before. It hides many things.”

  
“Only what safety requires.”

 

Thanak laughed without mirth. “And whose safety would that be?”

  
Glorfindel remained impassive. "Yours first and foremost, but also mine and that of those who eagerly await our return at home.”

 

“Which is?”

  
“Imladris, in Arnor. Where Elrond, your father rules the Hidden Valley with the Lady Celebrían, your mother.”

  
Elrohir appeared utterly unmoved. “None of those names hold meaning to me. It must have been over forty years. I am surprised to hear my parents are still alive, let alone sending out search parties.”

  
Glorfindel was dismayed by Elrohir’s lack of recognition, the seeming absence of any emotion. He wanted show the young Half-Elf right there and then the faces of his brother, his parents, to make him remember whether he wanted to or not. What kept him was the presence of the Haradrim, and the likelihood of Elrohir reacting unpredictably to the strangeness of thought-opening.

  
Glorfindel played his final card.

“What about your brother? Have you completely forgotten Elladan?”

  
This hit Elrohir like a slap in the face. He gasped for breath, physically affected by the rush of memories triggered by the mention of his twin. After a long silence, he looked at Glorfindel again, this time with a gentleness that hadn’t been there before.

  
“We meet in interesting times, Glorfindel. The war against Umbar is at a turning point. In the coming weeks we must defeat them or be utterly destroyed, leaving all of the free people of Harad in chains. And right at this very moment you appear, as if by Eru’s own hand, with a tale that is simply too fancy to be true in this mad world.”

  
Glorfindel stated fact when he answered, “Yet you believe me, or you would have had me killed by now.”

  
When Elrohir replied, his eyes held a sheen of unshed tears. “I believe you, Eru help me! But I can’t see how that still matters now. As you have your duty to uphold, so do I have mine. Time is running out. Now that I have delivered my message to Amuk, I am needed elsewhere, and with great haste. My companions and I will leave in an hour, for we do not have even the day to spare. Where we go, you can’t follow. Amuk and his folk will now turn South to the Pass of Horns. You must go with them and wait for me there. Eru willing, I will find you again. Then we will see what can be done.”

  
Glorfindel smiled, briefly allowing himself to revel at having convinced Elrohir. Now that the young Half-Elf believed him, all that remained to be done to bring him home was strategy. And strategy was a thing Glorfindel had excelled at many centuries before this young Perehel’s grandfather had been a twinkle in his great-grandmother’s eye.

  
“Take me with you, wherever you are going. No matter what awaits, you will be glad you brought me before the end.”

  
Elrohir shook his head. “You know nothing of the desert, Master Glorfindel. Even if you are as much of an asset as you claim, we cannot bring one such as you on the journey we are about to make. Speed is of the essence. You don’t have a camel, and even if you did you aren’t used to riding. Go with Amuk.”

  
“Camels can bear two people,” Glorfindel retorted.

  
“Not as far, as fast and with as little water as the journey we are about to attempt. I would condemn both of us and my camel to death from thirst if I agreed to this.”

  
“In that case you leave me no choice but to follow you on foot.”

Elrohir was flabbergasted by the sheer folly of that.

“You’d be dead before the third day broke.”

“Do not underestimate me. There is more than the eye can see.”

At that Elrohir’s eyebrows almost disappeared beneath his turban. “Whatever that is, I am quite sure it will not allow you to walk all the way through the Great Dunes with only the water you can carry on your back!”

  
He had clearly never met an Elf-warrior, and certainly not one such as Glorfindel, born in the light of the Two Trees. Glorfindel knew beyond all doubt that his endurance would be double or more of what even the strongest Mortal body could bear.

  
“I have sworn to bring you home safely. Now that I have found you I will not let you go to war alone. If I cannot ride with you, I will walk in your tracks wherever you are going, and I will find you at their end.”

  
Elrohir was visibly taken aback by that much persistence in the face of reason.

  
“You are mad. The only thing you will find in my tracks is your death.”

  
“A chance I am willing to take. Hear me Thanak, or Elrohir, the name I heard your father give you the day you were born. Whatever is on the other side of the dunes, you will be glad of my help. Take me, or I shall walk.”

  
Elrohir gave an exasperated sigh. “Very well. I’ll take you in my saddle, but know this. If your presence threatens our mission, I will not hesitate to abandon you to your fate in the desert.”

  
With that, he rose to his feet, clearly distressed. His men were already saddling their camels and packing their gear. He set to the same tasks in the reddish light of sunrise. With as little as he knew of camels, Glorfindel could see that Elrohir’s was a fine one. The animal was tall, with intelligence in its eye, its coat a golden tan. Glorfindel noticed several heavy-tipped spears strapped to the saddle where they could be easily reached. They were long enough for a mounted rider to do battle with an adversary on the ground. There was a second quiver with even more crossbow bolts, fletched with the feathers of desert fowl. With satisfaction, he noticed that the saddle would indeed seat two if necessary.

  
Behind Glorfindel, Amuk approached. He was carrying Glorfindel’s pack, weapons and waterskin that had been taken from him before the raid. The skin had been filled to capacity, and there was a bundle of dried dates Glorfindel did not remember packing.

  
“May Eru protect you, Glorfindel. These times grow dark and we may not meet again in this life or the next. I am glad to see that honor and loyalty have not entirely forsaken this world.”

  
Despite the strangeness that lay between them Glorfindel bowed to this brave captain of Men, who had taken a chance by sparing his life and leading him to Elrohir for no other reason than that he understood all about a father’s love.

  
“My thanks and blessings, Amuk. May your fortunes in this war and beyond be favorable, and may you return safely to those you care for."

  
Elrohir silently packed Glorfindel’s belongings with his own, and they were on their way.


	4. Chapter 4

This smaller band clearly was a group of experienced desert fighters who understood each other with few words. Besides Elrohir there were two men and two women. All appeared to be of Númenórean ancestry; one of the women even had the grey eyes and pale skin that marked her as Gondorian.

  
The ride itself was punishing. The Umbarian traders had ridden during the daytime too, but on smaller even-footed pack camels and never at speed. This ride felt like receiving two beatings at once: one from the camel below him and the other from the burning Haradi sun directly overhead. He now fully understood the Haradrim fashion of covering the whole body including the face. As the sun rose, the intensity of its glare off the sand underfoot irritated Glorfindel. To Mortal eyes it had to be near unbearable. Elrohir and his companions handed a small jar around, its contents an inky black. They darkened the skin around their eyes with the mixture of ground charcoal and animal fat, which brought some relief. When Elrohir turned around and offered it to him he gratefully accepted.

  
Out here in the deep desert water was precious as life itself. Elrohir told him early on that they would not pass anymore wells or watering holes. They had only what their camels carried, and would find no more before they reached their destination, which he refused to name. Glorfindel observed Elrohir and made sure to drink less often and in smaller amounts than the Half-Elf did, which was hard enough. The constant gnawing thirst gave him a new respect for his mortal companions’ ability to suppress the longings of their feeble bodies.

  
At high noon they took a short break, setting up a tarp to rest in the shade. The camels were hobbled, but they stayed nearby as there was nothing to graze in the vast sea of sand they had now entered. As the others lay down to sleep, Elrohir sat up to take first watch. He had removed his head-covering. His dark hair was cropped short, as seemed to be the custom among the Haradrim. Glorfindel could see the uneven bristles in his neck where one of his fellow warriors must have cut it for him with a knife. The sight gave Glorfindel unpleasant thoughts of thralldom, for no Elf would voluntarily allow such a thing.

  
It would be a long work, to bridge this gulf of strangeness that gaped between what Elrohir had become and what he was born to be. Suddenly Glorfindel doubted the wisdom of his counsel to Elrond, that the Peredhel stay behind in Imladris. Glorfindel himself had little fondness of Mortals, the esteem he had held for Tuor all but demolished by witnessing Isildur’s weakness. Elrond, with his ingrained understanding of Elrohir’s adopted people, would probably have had a far easier time building a rapport. A dear price the Peredhel had paid for safekeeping the burden that was Vilya. Glorfindel would see to it that it would run no higher.

  
When he was completely sure the others were asleep, Glorfindel sat down opposite Elrohir. He chose the spot both to scan the horizon at the young Half-Elf’s back, and to see his face. Even with the black stripes around his eyes he was the spitting image of his brother.

  
“Will you not tell me where we are going?”

  
Elrohir smiled wryly.

  
“We are on a hunt, Master Glorfindel. Our prey hides in the Sea of Dunes. I did not tell you in Amuk’s camp because I did not want to cause alarm to those overhearing our conversation.”

  
Glorfindel carefully read what little emotion slipped past Elrohir’s carefully maintained facade. To his dismay, it was pure and unadulterated fear.

  
“What is it you seek?” he asked, urgency in his voice.

  
“I do not know. We have no name for such a creature. It seems to be a man, and yet not. Fear is its weapon, and with that it causes a slow death without wounds. It sets itself against the Haradrim, aiding Umbar. It will be our downfall if we do not defeat it soon.”

  
Glorfindel felt an icy fist close around his heart as he thought of Sauron, fled into the wilds after his downfall at the hands of the Last Alliance, when Isildur failed to deal him the killing blow.  
He took Elrohir by the arm, his fingers gentle but firm.

  
“Have you seen this creature with your own eyes?”

  
“I have.”

  
“Show me.”

  
Elrohir looked at him in confusion, thinking the question an ill-timed jest.

  
“I do not have it in my pocket.”

  
Glorfindel did not even smile at the attempt at a light-hearted answer. His eyes bored into Elrohir’s.

  
“You and I, we have an ability we call thought-opening. It can be used to share memories. You may never have experienced it among Men, but you are certainly capable of it. Allow me to see this being through your eyes so I may put a name to it, if I can.”

  
Elrohir recoiled, backing away from Glorfindel with loathing in his eyes, his right hand moving towards the dagger in his belt.

  
“I have felt that before, too, and from the very thing we seek. It was not an experience I’d care to repeat. Are you one like him, perhaps given fair form to deceive us?”

  
Glorfindel raised both hands.

  
“No! Look into my eyes and you will know I speak the truth. He may be capable of a dark and twisted version of thought-opening, but I am nothing like him.”

  
Elrohir relaxed somewhat. Glorfindel reached for him. With clear trepidation Elrohir let himself be touched.

“Take my hand, this will make it easier.”

  
As gently as he possibly could to avoid spooking Elrohir again, Glorfindel reached into his mind. That distinctive, almost-Elvish weave of it was instantly familiar from Elrond and Elladan. The contents were another matter. Glorfindel could feel resistance born of sheer terror. It was obvious that Elrohir wanted nothing more than to recoil at the unfamiliar sensation of another mind against his, but he wanted to learn what Glorfindel could tell him even more. Panic rose, its discord jangling the weft and warp of Elrohir’s mind. Glorfindel could feel him suppress it with the skill of one used to their life depending on composure. It was only a moment before he regained his bearings and brought up the memory.

_Elrohir stood guard over a sleeping encampment. It was a dark noontime, the air so saturated with the dust blown up by a hot southern wind that a permanent red dusk had descended. As people and camels slept, the only things moving were the billowing curtains of dust endlessly driven across the sky. There was nothing peaceful about the scene._

  
_Even being only the recipient of the memory, Glorfindel could feel the unease and impending threat weigh as heavily on his mind as if he were there. Something wicked approached._

  
_The camels could feel it too, and they started bellowing, trying to run despite their hobbles. All around him, men and women awoke and reached for their weapons. Every eye was trained on the invisible horizon and the dancing veils of dust, but nothing else moved there. Suddenly, on the edge of vision, something disturbed the pattern of the dust storm. There was a man walking towards the camp. No, rather than a man it was the absence of one, a man-shaped emptiness in the red dust. The crushing press of fear intensified. Somewhere behind him, Elrohir heard camels scream in blind panic. Some of the people did, too. One of the archers drew his crossbow to shoot a bolt at the thing. It was well-aimed but passed straight through the shape unheeded as it continued its approach._  
_Elrohir became aware of being touched, not physically but in mind as if another were with him in the darkness behind his eyelids. It was vile, a disgusting violation. He struggled with all his might to remove the thing as it clung to him with a grip of iron._

  
_“You are not like the others!” The coldness of that hissing voice was torture in itself._

  
_“What are you?! Speak!”_

_The pain intensified. The creature used fear as its weapon, filling Elrohir’s mind with it like a poison until it froze him like an ant in amber. There, just before the breaking point where the creature would destroy his mind and bring him under its shadow, a memory resurfaced from a time long forgotten._

  
_“A Elbereth, Gilthoniel! A tiro nin!”_

_His waking mind did not understand the words, but they had left his mouth nonetheless. It seemed they not only lifted the creature’s hold on him, but struck fear into its dark heart._

  
_When he became aware of his surroundings once more he was on his bedroll, concerned faces looking down on him. The creature had fled, hours ago as it turned out. Meanwhile the dust had settled and through a gap between the tarps he could see the stars._

Glorfindel let go of Elrohir’s mind and hand. They were once more in the sea of dunes under clear blue sky and harsh midday sun.

  
Elrohir rubbed his eyes, seeming dazed. Passing the memory had been hard work, Glorfindel realised, for one not used to it from childhood. He touched the Peredhel’s mind again. Elrohir was surprised, but allowed it once more. This time Glorfindel only gave of the strength he had aplenty, glad he could do at least this small thing for him. When he withdrew, Elrohir’s mind felt clear and strong.

  
At his expectant look, Glorfindel answered, “As I feared, I do know him. He is not the one I dreaded most but a deadly adversary nonetheless. He is a Ringwraith, one of Nine. In the North we believed him and those of his ilk vanquished with the defeat of their evil master. I see now that we have greatly underestimated them.”

  
“How did you do it?” demanded Elrohir eagerly.

  
“Do what?”

  
“How did you defeat them to begin with? If you succeeded once, it can be done twice. There is only one now and not the worst among them, as you said. Can they be killed?”

  
Glorfindel looked at the dunes stretching to the distant horizon and thought of Elrond, the White Council, and the many weeks of travel separating them. The magnitude of such an undertaking was daunting. He finally dismissed it as impossible. He was alone in this, with one far too young to be a threat to the likes of the Witch-King.

  
After a long silence, Glorfindel finally answered. “Not by mortal men. I believe that the time for this one to die will not come for many long years yet.”

  
At Elrohir’s look of desperation, he answered, “But he can be weakened, struck with terror, his own weapon, and driven far from here. Which is what we will attempt.”

  
Elrohir did not seem convinced. “How?”

  
“Not by the sword or any other physical weapon. Some weapons are only of the mind. You remembered a little of that art when you first encountered him, and it saved your life in more ways than you know.”

  
While speaking those words a terrible understanding dawned on Glorfindel. A cold sliver of fear of what might have been if their fates on this day had been even a little different slid across his heart when he realised the full measure of Elrohir’s despair.

  
“Now I see why you, of all the warriors in Harad, and your companions have come on this hunt. All five of you have Númenórean blood, the blood of Lúthien. You directly, they through the Faithful of Númenor. With that comes at least some measure of skill in matters of the Unseen. You all have in the past resisted or survived the Ringwraith in some way. You were sent to make a final stand against him, and you came here fully expecting to die. That’s why you are not concerned about water for the return journey, and why you refused to take me.”

  
He searched Elrohir’s eyes for confirmation, and knew his words to be the truth. With or without Glorfindel’s presence, this hunt would have been the last mission Elrohir ever carried out for the Haradrim. The cruelty of him dying alone, in terror and without even knowing his father’s name was beyond what Glorfindel could bear to contemplate.

  
“You see more than you are shown, Glorfindel. We have no desire to take our own lives. But knowing what we do, I can honestly say that I see no other possible outcome. We will try to stand against him, and be defeated. Harad will fall.”

  
After Ruhiren’s tales Glorfindel had expected to encounter darkness and despair in the desert. It was nonetheless painful to see Elrohir ensnared by it.

  
“Why? Why throw your life away on this desperate stand you have next to no hope of accomplishing? Do you not care for the life you have been given?”

  
Elrohir looked at Glorfindel and spoke plainly, as if explaining a simple fact of daily life to a child.

“This may yet prove a selfish act, before the end. To see Harad fall under the iron fist of the Black Númenóreans once more… I have no desire to survive that day. In the end the dead may be the lucky ones, to find themselves far beyond their reach.”

Glorfindel knew he was treading dangerous ground.

“You are not one of the Haradrim in sooth. I am not telling you to leave now, or even asking you to, merely offering. If you want to go north, we can. I know you believe yourself bound by duties and oaths, but in the eyes of your own people you are too young to be held to such responsibilities. I will lend you what help I can with the war, if that is your choice. But you only need to say the word and your part in all this shall end.”

  
Elrohir was less offended than he could have been.

“I am going to pretend you did not just propose me to commit desertion. It will spare us the misery that will come from me trying to behead you, which is what our laws require me to do in such cases. For both our sakes I have only heard the part where you said you would defeat the Ringwraith.”

  
Glorfindel looked at the bright young spirit before him. One fateful day he had stopped darkness from consuming the child’s forefathers. He had brought down a Balrog then.

He would not cower before a mere Mortal now, Ringwraith or not.


	5. Chapter 5

Glorfindel laughed, fearless and full of joy. He made a conscious effort to cast off the despair that still clung to his companion like a heavy cloak.

  
“Elrohir Elrondion, you bravest of fools,” Glorfindel chuckled. “It was without a doubt divine intervention that brought us together this day, and despite the Valar’s best efforts you would have left me behind with the luggage.”

  
Elrohir did not even smile. “You should stop singing their praises so loudly if you want to make friends in these parts. That said, you are unlike anything I have ever seen before. Your death would be a great loss, and I would have no part in it.”

  
Glorfindel looked him in the eye, still with nothing but joy in his open gaze. His words seemed to carry many layers of meaning when he said, “The same can be said for you. These days I am rather hard to kill. I will not die, and neither will you.”

  
Elrohir ignored the implications of the words. There probably was only so much he could wrap his mind around in one day.

“What do you propose?”

“Send your companions back to Amuk. They will be more burden than help. Then bring me to him, and I’ll see what can be done.”

  
Elrohir paled. Until now he had made an effort to mask his fear. At those words he dropped all pretenses, terror plain as day in his eyes.

“Alone? This is madness. Have you not seen what he is capable of? Once het sets his eye on you, you’ll be swept away by fear like a flood, to darkness and death. There is no escape from his gaze once it is upon you. Our only hope lies in numbers. Even he cannot subdue six attackers at a time.”

  
“I have seen him on what was to be the day of his triumph, crowned with iron might. He knows me and my kind well. When we confronted all nine Ringwraiths in battle they could not stand against us in the end. He did not forget! He is alone now, and much diminished. Once he was a Mortal Man, and despite the foul enchantments laid on him, he still knows fear. It will be his undoing.”

  
Elrohir seemed only half-convinced, caught between a wild new hope and the weight of long-carried despair. He was quiet for a time, and guarded while thinking. His next concern was of a far more personal nature.

“How do I know you will not tie me in a sack once the others are out of earshot, and drag me north to your Lord?”

  
At first Glorfindel was appalled at being thought a liar and a coward. Then he remembered the slave market in Pellardur. Elrohir may have a distinct lack of trust, but he had his reasons.

  
“I can only give you my word.”

  
“There is no promise you can make that I can trust.”

  
Glorfindel smiled once more. “In that case you will have to take a chance. Know this: if I really wanted to take you north against your will, I could already have done so. Your companions are no match for me.”

  
Elrohir considered this.

  
“Very well, Master Glorfindel. For lack of an alternative, I agree to your proposal, Eru help me.”

 

\----

 

When they woke the others, they responded to Elrohir’s order to turn away with equal measures of concern and relief. The Gondorian woman, whose name was Hamalan, would not be swayed by Elrohir’s assurances that he had agreed to the arrangement of his own free will. She was a fair woman in her prime, all soft roundedness and long dark braids, but her scarred hands and straightforward pragmatism spoke of a life amid violence. Glorfindel could tell she genuinely cared for Elrohir. They had obviously known each for a long time, judging from the way their conversation required few words.

  
Hamalan insisted on leaving the camp with Elrohir until they were out of earshot between the dune ridges. They spoke at length there before she could be convinced that her captain had not been bewitched or possessed by the strange Northerner. Elrohir and Hamalan agreed to meet again at the Pass of Horns. Goodbyes were short, but all seemed well aware that they might never see each other again.

  
When the four riders had disappeared beyond the shimmering horizon, Elrohir saddled his own kneeling camel. He was quiet; whether from sadness at the parting or unease around him, Glorfindel could not tell.  
There was rather more packing than before. The others had left them as much food and water as they could spare, in addition to Glorfindel’s pack and Elrohir’s own belongings. He expertly balanced everything and tied it down in such a way that their weapons would still be in easy reach. The camel seemed to disagree, groaning loudly and snapping at Elrohir with every pack he added. Elrohir was clearly unimpressed. He simply kept pushing the large head with its yellow teeth aside, gently chiding the animal in Haradi.

  
“Will he be able to carry all this?” Glorfindel asked with concern.

  
“Of course. Ot can just be a little cantankerous at times.”

  
“Ot? Is that his name? I thought that word meant 'no good'?"

  
“It does. Ot has been with me for many years. He’s a fine camel but he gets grumpy. Mind his muzzle!”

  
Glorfindel smiled at the small joke, glad that Elrohir’s years in Harad had not robbed him of his sense of humor. He did make sure to keep well away from the animal’s head as he mounted behind Elrohir. A click of the Half-Elf’s tongue and up they went.

  
They rode for what remained of the day, and much of the night that followed. Glorfindel took advantage of the hours to talk to Elrohir, speaking of his home and family. The landscape passed unheeded under pale moonlight, all dunes alike onto the horizon. A few times, Elrohir brought Ot to a stop to stand up in the saddle and study the strange southern stars to determine their direction.

  
By morning, Glorfindel could feel Elrohir’s muscles relax, then tense suddenly for a brief instant, his head lolling forwards, before he straightened himself out again. He was alarmed at first, thinking some strange illness had befallen the Peredhel. Then the realisation dawned that he had no idea how long Elrohir had already been in the saddle when he met Amuk’s company the previous night. He certainly had not slept since.

  
“We should stop, and rest.”

  
“Don’t worry about Ot, he’s fine. We will reach the place I seek tomorrow morning and he could still walk twice as far if we needed him to.”

  
“It is not Ot who concerns me. You are no help to me if you arrive there exhausted.”

  
‘I can sleep in the saddle,” Elrohir retorted.

  
“You can not, because you are the one steering us. We could amble off in the wrong direction for hours and I would never know.”

  
Elrohir shrugged. “It’s fine,” he murmured evasively.

With a jolt, Glorfindel understood that Elrohir was afraid to fall asleep and be at Glorfindel’s mercy.

  
His voice was gentle when he said, “If I meant to cause you harm, I could have done so days ago. Whether or not you are asleep does not make any difference. Please stop now, and rest. I will do nothing but guard you.”

  
Elrohir turned around to look at him. He clearly was miserable, his eyelids swollen and face pale despite his tan.

  
More to himself than to Glorfindel he said, “You’re right. I’ll have to fall asleep at some point during this journey, and risk waking either tied up in my own saddlebag or under a spell of white-fiend magic. I might as well do it now and be done with it.”

  
He brought Ot to a stop and bade the camel to kneel. It did so with a moan that, to Glorfindel clearly expressed relief. Elrohir did not even bother with the tarp. He simply unsaddled Ot with trembling hands, hobbled the animal, and lay down where he stood with the saddle blanket for pillow. Mere moments later his body relaxed into sleep.

  
Glorfindel quietly set up the tarp over the still figure and sat down next to him to take watch, true to his word. He did not need sleep the way Mortals did, and it would be many more days before he would feel any need to seek rest on the paths of memory.

  
The sun rose over the dune sea in a radiant display of rust and orange. In the reddish light Elrohir’s face looked even younger than his forty years. He slept like a Mortal, eyes closed and mind on the strange, fragmented paths the minds of Men take when exhaustion has become too great for dreams. He was still wearing his sword-belt and the leather harness that had held his crossbow, the weapons lying forgotten on the ground beside him. The whole scene was jarring. In these days of peace in the North, no Elf of Elrohir’s age would need to touch a weapon until well past their first long-year.

  
Eärendil’s star was just setting in the East. Glorfindel found himself annoyed with it, wishing he could somehow flag down the Mariner and make him carry his grandson to safety. He would not come, Glorfindel knew, just like he had not come for his own twin sons as they grew up in army camps raised by kinslayers. Glorfindel had never sired children himself but he was keenly aware of how precious they were. He had never understood Eärendil’s heedlessness. He made a conscious effort to abandon his resentment for more constructive lines of reasoning. It was dishonest to accuse the Mariner of indifference to Elrohir’s fate. He was bound to the heavens, forbidden from interfering in the affairs of Middle-earth by the Valar themselves, and Glorfindel knew it.

  
Elrohir awoke at noon, bleary and disoriented at first. His evident relief upon finding himself unharmed would have amused Glorfindel if it had not been so harrowing. After a small meal of waybread and dates they rode again for what remained of the day.

  
Gradually Glorfindel could feel a change in the desert around them. What small animals there had been--lizards, snakes, the tiny crawling creatures burrowing in the sand--diminished in number, then disappeared entirely. A leaden silence descended on the frozen sea of dunes. With it came an oppressive dread that constricted the heart and mind. Ot became reluctant, and Elrohir had to apply all his skills to keep him going.

As the sun dipped towards the west, the display of color reminiscent of spilled blood, a red rock formation appeared on the southern horizon. Despite seeming small at such a distance, it dominated the landscape. The pervasive fear that saturated this place somehow radiated from it like heat from a brazier. At the sight Ot balked and could not be persuaded to take another step. The camel’s sounds of protest echoed frighteningly loud in the tomb-like silence. They rode back a small ways, into a sheltered valley between the dunes. There Elrohir unsaddled Ot, and left him hobbled with their packs, continuing on foot in the falling dusk.

  
Elrohir had told Glorfindel that the rocks held a cave, which in the past had been a stopping place for Haradrim caravans. Now nameless terror had taken residence there, coming and going at will. Glorfindel took care to hide himself and Elrohir from the creature lurking in the rocks. Against its unsleeping eyes he sang songs of power, of cloaking and secrets kept. Thus they reached the cave mouth unhindered. To an ancient Immortal a Ringwraith held little terror but Elrohir’s youth and his Mortal blood made him far more sensitive. Until then he had walked beside Glorfindel without a word, but there, at the dark gaping maw of the creature’s lair, the Elda could tell his young companion was at breaking point.

“Wait here,” he whispered, and the sound of his fair voice seemed to break the oppression of fear for a moment.

Elrohir did not protest as Glorfindel entered the lurid darkness by himself.

Glorfindel did not need to search. The Ringwraith had lain in wait only a little way into the cave. Elrohir could not discern a thing in that unnatural darkness so thick it was almost a physical presence. To Glorfindel, who could see in both worlds, the creature appeared as a tall and ancient Man, crowned with iron, lit only by the corpse-glow of its own flesh. It drew no weapon, but opened its semblance of a mouth and screamed.

  
Elrohir had tried to resist, regain his courage and enter the cave behind Glorfindel. Then came the scream, and Elrohir’s legs gave out. He sank to his knees, folding in on himself as if struck.  
Glorfindel released all disguises. Suddenly there was a light, clear and pure and as bright as if the midday sun had risen inside the cave. In the center of it stood Glorfindel, a figure of white and gold, barely discernible in such great radiance.

His clear voice called out “A Elbereth! Lacho calad, drego morn!”

  
The creature screamed once more, but this time it was the sound of panic at the unexpected confrontation with an enemy it remembered well indeed. It drew its blade. This was not the mighty black sword it had once wielded and lost on the field of Dagorlad, but a smaller dagger-like one of a strange, dull grey color. Glorfindel drew the dented sword he had carried on his hip since leaving the gates of Imladris. Now, with all concealment lifted, it was sharp and well-made, glowing with a fierce blue light of its own. Hadhafang was its name, throng-cleaver, an heirloom of Elrond’s house nearly old as Glorfindel himself, and as sharp. Faced with the wrath of an Elf-Lord of Aman in all his might the Ringwraith fled shrieking towards the mouth of the cave.

  
There it found easier prey. With shock and horror Glorfindel felt the weight of the vile creature’s attention shift to Elrohir. From the darkness that had fallen once more inside the cave the Peredhel had heard the sound of steel being drawn, and he had done the same with his own scimitar. He now held it up blindly in front of him, trying to deflect a lethal blow from an opponent he could not see. Glorfindel could feel echoes of a vicious attack on Elrohir’s mind, seen and recognised for what it was: smaller and weaker than his companion, a prize easily obtained. With a shriek that could have crumbled rocks the Ringwraith threw himself at Elrohir, trying to stab him with its Morgul-blade. Elrohir, led by instinct more than sight, deflected the first blow.

  
Glorfindel’s blood turned to ice at the realisation that he had failed to foresee this, and through that oversight the Enemy might win this battle yet. There was no time for panic or regret, only for the swift action instilled by yéni of training. Glorfindel leapt onto the creature’s back like a great cat pouncing, bringing it down to the ground with him.

  
Glorfindel briefly touched Elrohir’s mind, roughly pushing all other thought aside. “Stand back!”

  
They grappled for Glorfindel knew not how long, Elrohir looking on in dismay from the cave mouth. The Wraith had once been mortal, but that weak body was melted away by Sauron’s dark arts long-years ago and replaced by bone and sinew that was more than physical flesh. Finally, after a small eternity of terror and an agonizing near-miss with the poisonous blade, Glorfindel wrested the weapon from the Wraith and tossed it far into the cave. He struck it across the face with a resounding crack, deeply satisfied by the shattering of bone beneath his fist.

  
He sat astride the creature. It seemed the Wraith could not bear to look at the light in Glorfindel’s eyes, and at the sight of him so close it screamed again as if tortured.

  
Glorfindel raised his voice in song. The song’s raw power brought Elrohir to his knees once more, shivering under its onslaught. It was mighty, like an unstoppable flood or the roaring of thunder leaving destruction in its wake, yet carried in itself a wild, untamed joy that lifted the heart and sent it soaring. With it, the white light in the Elf-Lord’s face became too bright even for Elrohir to look into. The Ring-wraith, trapped in Glorfindel’s hold, screeched in pain-filled madness.

  
At the song's end Glorfindel spoke in a fair, ringing language. Elrohir had never heard it before but he understood nonetheless.

  
“It is not your doom to die by my hand this night. You tried to take one of mine for your own, and for that I will have my vengeance. As blinded as you are by this light, you will remain to all things with your waking eyes. The Unseen is now the only sight left to you. Glorfindel of Gondolin is my name. Remember it.”

  
With that, he stood and released the Ringwraith. It fled instantly, gibbering madly as it crossed the desert floor below the rocks towards the East.

  
When Glorfindel turned back to Elrohir, the Peredhel scrambled away from him, sword in hand and eyes wide.

“Ai Eru! what are you?!”

Glorfindel crouched to look him in the eye.

“I am no wraith, Elrohir, nor any other creature of evil. Merely an Elf who has lived long and travelled far, in unusual ways. The long battle against the Enemy and his servants has been my study for three ages of the world.”

  
“For a creature of the light you do seem awfully dangerous,” Elrohir retorted.

  
Glorfindel smiled. “That is one way of putting it. You could call me dangerous, but so are you,” and in a sudden burst of generosity “and all Haradrim, in your own manner.”

  
Elrohir seemed only half convinced, but stood up nonetheless. He bowed to Glorfindel with formal grace and said, “Whatever you may be, you saved my life this night, and many others with me. I am in your debt.”

  
Glorfindel replied with equal formality. “Then this I would ask of you as repayment: that you ride North with me, so that we can end your family’s long uncertain wait.”

  
Elrohir's face fell. “Do not ask of me the one thing I cannot do. I will not break my oath and abandon my friends on the eve of battle. I have nowhere else to go from here than the Pass of Horns.”

  
Glorfindel managed not to show his frustration at the Peredhel’s stubbornness, his seeming insistence on getting himself killed or worse in this senseless battle between Mortals that should never have concerned him. It was frightening, how all it had taken for a descendant of the High King of the Noldor to align himself with a ragtag band of Secondborn suffering disturbing religious delusions was a mere forty years of proximity. Yet despite his annoyance, Glorfindel could not force Elrohir to abandon the Haradrim. An oath was an oath, a duty a duty, even towards the Followers.

  
“I did not ask you to do it straight away. Loyalty and oaths taken are the same here as they are in the North. Let us ride to the Pass together. But know that by your very nature, you are different from those you call friend here in Harad. They are Mortal Men, and you are something else entirely, more so than you now realize. You may have sojourned with them, but it must come to an end so you can go live among your own kind, and learn how to be one of us.”

  
Elrohir didn’t answer him at first, but stood staring at the pale expanse of the empty desert under a crown of blazing stars. He was silent as they walked back to the valley where they left Ot. Glorfindel could practically hear the turning of his mind. When he finally spoke, it was with sharp honesty reminding him of Elrond.

“I know. I have suspected something like this for a few years now, and had my suspicion confirmed when the wraith singled me out. Look at me. I must be over forty years old by my own count and there is no way of telling I am a day over twenty. My friends, the people who were young with me have begun to age; some have died already. Someone is bound to notice. Maybe not yet, but in ten years they certainly will.”

At this, Glorfindel nodded.

Elrohir continued. “That said, Harad is the only place I could imagine living. Life is straightforward here. From your stories I understand that my father is a nobleman. I know noble households. I grew up serving in one. How many half-brothers do I have, beside my twin? What position does our mother hold? Wife, concubine, or slave? How many of my father’s wives will gnash their teeth in the women’s quarters at my arrival, plotting to poison me so I won’t threaten their own sons’ place in the line of succession? I’d be easy prey, a friendless foreigner. I can honestly say I prefer the desert over such a life.”

  
Faced with that amount of misinformation, Glorfindel hardly knew where to begin. He made no effort to hide his disgust when he spoke.

  
“You should not mistake the perverse ways of the Black Númenóreans for the norm in more civilized places. Among the Eldar and Edain, marriage is for two people only. I understand it is like that among the Haradrim, too. There are no women’s quarters in your father’s house because there is only one woman for him, your mother. You have one brother, your twin Elladan. Rest assured that he would rather die himself than let you come to harm. He has suffered greatly from your absence. The very idea of him plotting your demise is madness.”

  
Elrohir did not respond, saddling Ot in silence. With the Ringwraith’s departure the leaden weight of fear had lifted from the landscape but neither of them had any desire to linger in the area.

Soon they were in the saddle again, their direction carefully determined by Elrohir. Glorfindel left him to his thoughts. When he spoke next, it was about something else entirely.

  
“Why did you tell him your name? The Ringwraith, I mean. He will be seeking revenge against you and so will his eight brothers, if they are still around somewhere. You have conveniently provided them with your identity.” Elrohir did not turn around, awaiting Glorfindel’s answer while adjusting Ot’s direction.

  
“Good question. I will not try to shield you from the answer. You are no longer a child by any stretch of the imagination and you need to know these things so that you may act upon them.” Glorfindel couldn’t help but feel a certain amount of satisfaction in delivering this most decisive of his arguments.

  
“The first time you encountered this creature it recognized you for what you are: a son of Elrond, neither Mortal nor fully of the Elves. There are no others like you and your brother in Middle-earth. Tonight it was lying in wait for you with a cursed Morgul-blade at the ready, doubtlessly hoping to bring its master an invaluable prize: one of Elrond’s sons, trapped in the spirit world as a slave-wraith. It would be a devastating blow to your family. A loss beyond weeping, far worse than death. That in itself could be enough to cast all the free lands of the West into Sauron’s lap if your parents chose to sail West in their grief. I have just sent the Enemy a clear message that Elrond’s children are well protected. What happened this night gives my purpose here all the more urgency. The wraith may have fled this time, but while you remain in Harad it will come for you again, maybe with others of its kind. Their Dark Master might even leave his hiding place to collect his prize himself. I alone have no chance of standing against Sauron, even diminished as he is by his last defeat. We need to get you out of Harad and back to the relative safety of the North before news of your identity can travel too far East.”

  
At this, Elrohir did turn around in the saddle to face his companion. Glorfindel could tell from the way he paled, concern written large in his eyes, that he understood.

  
“So my time here must end, whether I want it or not.” He looked at the ochre rocks around them under the blazing dome of stars. A herd of gazelles elegantly leaped away at their approach. They were descending from an escarpment down a small canyon, coming out into a vast, arid plain of gravel and sage-brush without end in sight. The eastern horizon had started to brighten to pale pearl.

  
“Let us rest here for the day,” Elrohir said. “We can find shadow under these rocks. It will be cooler than on the plain. It will take us at least three nights to get across. On the other side we will reach the Desert Mountains, and from there the Pass of Horns.”

  
“Three nights and days is a long time, with the water we have left,” Glorfindel said matter-of-factly.

  
Elrohir shrugged. “I have crossed the this salt-plain several times before. I am reasonably sure Ot will not fail us. We will be thirsty for a while, but there is water at the other end.”

  
Glorfindel struggled with the Haradi name of the place. “Kes Ubil, that means…”

  
Elrohir interrupted him. “It means ‘go in, and you won’t come out’. The name is meant to scare off foreigners. The Haradrim are fine, most of the time.”

  
“I’m glad to hear it,” Glorfindel said wryly.

  
Sitting under an overhanging part of the escarpment, their backs against the cool stone, they shared the inevitable dates and waybread while Ot grazed the dusty shrubs that grew nearby.  
Elrohir was quiet, his eyes as guarded as always. Glorfindel could tell his inner agitation from the way he was fidgeting with a loose thread on the sleeve of his robe. His preoccupation did not seem to concern their water reserves. Glorfindel quite correctly guessed that it must be what awaited them at the Pass of Horns that brought his young companion such distress.

  
“Will you not tell me what bothers you?”

  
Elrohir sighed. “I have been deceived by the Wraith, used as a pawn in a much larger scheme. I almost walked straight into his trap. He would have succeeded easily, if not for you. Somehow I failed to see what is clear as day now. I cannot help but wonder what other things have escaped my notice. What is about to unfold in the Pass is risky, and I am one of those who stood for it in the council. There is no way back now. I can only hope I have not inadvertently helped Umbar seal all our fates.”

  
With that he fell silent, clearly unwilling to reveal anything more about the Pass and the plans the Haradrim had there.

  
“There were too many gaps in your knowledge of who and what you are, and what exactly the Ringwraith is, for you to be able to discern the pattern. He will never again have that advantage over you. Do not hold it against yourself! Now that we have removed him from the equation, I do think that you have all the knowledge you need to act. The men of Umbar hold no secrets to you and the other Haradrim. From what I have seen of their skills, it is likely that the plan is sound.”

  
Elrohir smiled, though it did not reach his eyes. “You are right. Instead of brooding, we should sleep while we still can. Would you prefer first or second watch?”

  
“You may sleep all day,” Glorfindel replied generously as he turned towards the colorful spectacle of the rising sun in a sky saturated with reddish dust. “I do not need more rest than to sit here and watch the goings-on of what life this desert holds.”

  
Elrohir looked at him with new doubt. “You are an alien creature. I have been with you for five days now and you haven’t had a wink of sleep. I do not know if I am more concerned that you’ll fall over at some point, or that I might wake up alone, and you long fled with Ot and our packs.”

  
Glorfindel looked his young charge in the eye once more. In the reddish light he clearly saw how washed-out he looked, skin wan despite his tan, the deep-lying eyes and the way his hands trembled once more after restless days and nights in the saddle. The young Peredhel might need less sleep than a Mortal, but certainly more than an Elf. Even among Elves young ones had more need of rest than those full-grown. As a veteran of many campaigns, Glorfindel was no stranger to the way exhaustion begets paranoia and darkness in the mind.

  
“Please, Elrohir. I am an Elf, and a very old one at that. Sleep as Mortals know it is alien to me. It is no hardship for me to sit here for the day. As for your other fear… I am no Kinslayer. I could no more abandon you to die of thirst than I could cut off my own hand. Don’t let even the thought of such horrors darken your heart. It will not happen. Please, go to sleep.”

  
He reached out with his mind and touched Elrohir, the way he would do with his twin sometimes. Elrohir accepted the connection. Glorfindel allowed his feelings to be perceived: concern for Elrohir’s safety, joy at having found him, love. He knew them seen and understood when he next read his eyes.

 

“My apologies,” Elrohir whispered.”I will not accuse you of such things again.”

  
“No offense taken,” Glorfindel smiled warmly.

  
Elrohir laid down on Ot’s saddle-blanket with one of his bags for a pillow. Sleep eluded him, his mind racing between the Ringwraith, Elladan, the Pass, his friends among the Haradrim, the North. After a while he felt Glorfindel’s mind touch him once more. Expecting a memory, or more insight in the other’s thoughts, he accepted. Instantly a heavy warmth and tiredness spread across his body, impossible to resist. His eyes closed of their own accord and he knew no more.

 


	6. Chapter 6

When Elrohir woke the sun just touched the western horizon. He looked refreshed, free from the shadows of fear he had dragged with him since the encounter with the Ringwraith. When he realised he had slept the whole day away he sat up brusquely, muttering a curse under his breath. Glorfindel couldn’t help but grin as he watched the realisation sink in that Ot was already saddled, their small camp packed away and loaded onto the camel’s back. Glorfindel had even managed to pull the blanket and saddlebag from under Elrohir without waking him, and now sat waiting beside a small ration of food with an amused expression he hoped did not veer into smugness.

  
Elrohir did not begrudge Glorfindel this small victory. “Well, good evening. Hold up your hands so I may see how many fingers my camel has bitten off!”

  
Glorfindel smiled. “There is nothing to it once one has seen it done a few times.”

  
“You’re lucky he hasn’t gone in for your hair,” Elrohir quipped, having already noticed the Glorfindel’s one vanity.

  
As he sat down and started on his handful of dates, he became serious once more. “What did you do to me this morning?”

  
“You needed sleep. I gave it to you.“

Elrohir scoffed. “I was off the face of the earth for a whole day! I wonder why you still bother to carry a sword if you have the ability to down people like that!”

  
“I could only do it because you let me. It was your choice, in the end.”

  
Elrohir seemed taken aback. “Very well, but no more please. We can’t afford such long days anymore or we’ll run out of water before we reach the mountains.”

  
With that he stood up, still chewing his last mouthful, to inspect Ot. He found saddle and packing just like he would have done himself. He was all the more impressed with Glorfindel’s skill with animals because he knew very well that, like all Haradrim war camels, Ot had been trained to bite strangers.

 

\----

 

They rode southeast once more under the stars, the ever-present whistling of the desert wind and Ot’s hasty steps the only sound.

Later, Glorfindel found that he could not remember those three days and nights they spent on the plains of the Kes Ubil separately. They merged into a conglomerate of excruciating thirst, heat and sun-glare. Glorfindel and Elrohir stopped talking to each other after a day or so, simply because their throats were too parched. Rationing water became an obsession and a torment. When they allowed themselves a sip, they could hardly feel it in their dry, cracked mouths. They rode all night, willing themselves to think of anything other than the deflating water-skins in their packs and finding no diversion in the monotony of the starlit landscape around them. To conserve water and spare Ot they rested briefly under tarps at high noon.

  
Elrohir slept fitfully. Glorfindel was baffled to find his dreams filled with the sea, the surf cool and refreshing against an impossibly blue expanse. He sat beside his sleeping charge and watched Arien’s white-hot glare span its high arc over the great emptiness of the desert.

  
Towards the end Glorfindel almost lost hope that the vast, featureless wasteland of sage-brush and tumbleweeds stretching as far as the eye could see would ever end. Large carrion-birds circled overhead, seemingly waiting for the travelers to accept the inevitable and lay themselves down for it. The only thing that kept up his spirits was Elrohir’s firm conviction, read in his eyes clear as day, that he knew exactly where they were and where they were going. And sure enough, before daybreak of the fourth day, a dark line could be seen on the horizon. When Glorfindel strained his Elven eyes it broke apart into jagged peaks and valleys between. They had found the mountains.

As they reached the foothills towards the early morning of the fourth night, Elrohir spurred Ot on. He steered him into a deep canyon where a few green leaves on the otherwise skeletal acacia trees made a promise of water. When they caught sight of a small, brownish water hole, all that was left of the mighty floods that had passed here after a long-past downpour, Ot made a strangled noise Glorfindel hadn’t heard before, and broke into a gallop. Elrohir let go of the rein. The camel lowered its head and slurped noisily. Without making Ot kneel, Elrohir jumped off his back into the water, clothes and all. Glorfindel followed suit. The pool of water was brackish, laden with sand. The dung of animals that had drunk there surrounded it. None of them cared. The water of the crystal mountain springs of Imladris could not have been more precious. Elrohir stopped drinking just long enough to whip up Ot, who was trying to roll in the mud with the saddle and packs still on him. He unsaddled the camel, then let him do as he pleased. Ot covered himself in mud with noisy abandon.

  
The rosy light of dawn started to filter into the canyon, painting its towering russet walls with fire. The colours and layering of the water-shaped rocks were otherworldly, unlike anything Glorfindel had seen elsewhere, in Middle-earth or Valinor. Elrohir sat on a boulder beside the water. He had taken off his soaked over clothes and turban and spread them out to dry beside him. He closed his eyes and merely enjoyed not being thirsty anymore, relishing the victory of having survived another crossing.

  
Glorfindel sat down beside him. “Where to from here?” he asked, his voice surprisingly melodious after the long thirst.

  
When Elrohir answered him he did sound hoarse from the days of silence. “The mountains are a maze of canyons like this one. We will be riding in the shade from here to the Pass of Horns. And we’re bound to get some company long before that. Our people heavily patrol these mountains, water sources especially.”

  
Glorfindel’s curiosity had been piqued. “What lies beyond them, then, to require such guarding?”

  
He received a piercing look from Elrohir. Glorfindel could see the young one consider keeping him in the dark before deciding that they had come far enough together to warrant such trust.

“Khibil, the capital of the Haradrim. A large oasis, a stone fort and a city. It’s fertile land, providing most of the food we eat. Its main protection is its remoteness. It is virtually impossible to travel to Khibil the way the Umbarians do, without knowledge of the desert.”

  
Glorfindel could guess what was coming. “But now they are going to try it regardless?”

  
“Lord Zimrathôn has mounted a punitive expedition against the Haradrim on a scale we have never seen before. Our spies in Umbar send word that a large contingent of the Imperial army has been dispatched into the deep desert. The logistical troubles they have gone through to supply the troops with food and water are beyond anything we’ve ever seen. They mean to raze Khibil to the ground and occupy the the oasis itself. That would end our ability to feed ourselves, and thereby the war.”

  
“What does Harad intend to do about it?” Glorfindel inquired, dreading the answer.

  
“Scorched earth,” Elrohir answered matter-of-factly. “We mean to isolate them from their supply lines, starve them by poisoning all the wells and water holes they’ll come across, then finish them off in an ambush at the Pass of Horns. An army that size cannot pass through these mountains by any other route. If we manage to destroy them, the Lords of Umbar lose much of their military power. They cannot spare more troops to send here, or they’d risk leaving their Northern border undefended against Gondor. This campaign could effectively end their influence in the desert.”

  
“How many men?”

“About ten-thousand, twenty among them mounted. On elephants, that is. They also bring a few thousand camels.”

  
Like no other, Glorfindel understood the logistical challenge of bringing an army that size to such a remote location, and the breathtaking arrogance required to even try.

  
“Where is Zimrathôn getting all that water?”

  
“Much of it is being carried by the animals, but he also means to leave behind fortifications at regular intervals to keep supply lines up.”

  
“An ambitious plan,” Glorfindel remarked, anxious to hear more about Elrohir’s role in all this.

  
“It is already starting to come apart,” Elrohir answered. “They did not expect us to poison our own wells. You have seen the burned fields. The Umbarians will find no food or water for weeks. We keep their supply convoys under heavy attack. And when they come here, to the heart of the desert, we will be waiting for them.”

A fire had appeared in Elrohir’s eyes as he spoke.

  
Glorfindel felt the press of concern in his chest. He had expected fighting at the Pass of Horns, something like Amuk's raid on the Umbarian caravan or slightly larger, and had planned to somehow keep Elrohir out of the thick of it. Now that the full scale of the operation was revealed, he could only despair at the sheer hopelessness of it. He looked the young Half-Elf up and down as he sat there in his drying undertunic, unpleasantly reminded of mulish King Oropher’s Silvan warriors at Dagorlad, mowed down by the hundreds by mail-clad orcs while dressed in boiled leather vests with wooden arrows for their longbows.

  
He needed to at least try to inject some reason into the conversation. “Allow me to summarize this: about three-thousand Haradrim with stolen weapons and no armour, against three legions of Imperial soldiers armed to the teeth and with support of not only a large camel cavalry, but also elephants? You are all insane.”

  
Elrohir smiled wryly. “Probably. But you forget our greatest ally. Not the Haradrim will defeat Umbar. The desert itself will. By the time they reach the Pass of Horns we hope to have them half-mad with thirst, most of their animals already slaughtered or abandoned. Once we have them caught in the Pass in such a state it’ll be like spearing fish in a barrel.”

  
Glorfindel, with ages of tactical experience, was thinking fast. He considered distances, supply lines, provisions, calculated the needs of water and food for man and beast each day in this climate. But most of all he thought of the maddening torture that was thirst and the despair that had threatened even him on their long crossing of the Kes Ubil. He was greatly vexed by the lack of information on the current position and state of the Umbarian army. Elrohir could not tell him: he had not received any news in the days the two of them had travelled the empty desert alone since leaving Amuk. In the end, Glorfindel had to concede this: the Haradrim were ruthless bastards and their plan, while risky, had the potential to succeed.

  
“You will suffer heavy losses, against such an enemy,” Glorfindel brought up.

  
Elrohir answered with surprising equanimity. “I believe we all far prefer death to slavery.”

  
To Glorfindel this shed a new and disconcerting light on Elrohir’s state of mind. By his own admission he had been an ardent proponent of this risky strategy. When the Haradrim council agreed to it, Elrohir had willingly embarked on what amounted to a suicide mission to eliminate the Ringwraith before it could turn the tides of war in Umbar’s favor.

  
Glorfindel was once more at a loss to understand how a descendant of Arafinwë could be contemplating sacrificing himself for a cause of so little consequence in the grand scheme of things. The stiff-necked Peredhel had clearly inherited his family’s penchant for the dramatic. At least his grandmother’s rash decision to throw herself off a cliff had been over a Silmaril instead of a random patch of desert and some vague illusions of liberty. Glorfindel surmised that Harad’s victory would attract far less rejoicing, or even understanding in Valinor than Elwings’s offerings had, should Elrohir find himself dispatched West by the swiftest road.

  
The realisation that followed was an unwelcome reminder. Unlike Glorfindel’s own experience, for Elrohir Mandos’ Halls would not just hold an accounting, but also a choice. He had not, could not be told of that yet. Given his current state of mind there was no doubt that he’d choose rashly to accept death if his adopted cause required it, and the Fate of Men thereafter. Besides protecting Elrohir from an uninformed decision he would come to regret, Glorfindel freely admitted to himself that he did not want to contemplate the conversations he’d be having with Elrohir’s parents and grandparents if that came to pass.

  
Glorfindel spoke carefully. “Do not throw your life away rashly or in bitterness. You are needed back home, for things other than war. Your family loves you, Elrohir, and you will remember it ere the end.”

Elrohir nodded, his manner detached. “Let us not worry about tomorrow. Today has its own merits.”

  
With that he rose. He put his half-dried clothes back on and started to light a small fire from dead shrubs he gathered around the pool. Once it burned brightly he commenced a curious ritual of boiling water, grinding some strange black beans he had brought in his pack and that he treated like precious diamonds, then combining the two. He poured the resulting black liquid in two small cups into which he then dropped a lump of sugar. “Come Glorfindel. Even if life as we know it shall come to an end soon, I do believe we have earned ourselves a cup of coffee. It’s nice and sweet, though I regret I cannot offer you cardamom with it.” Glorfindel accepted the strange, steaming concoction and sniffed it before taking a sip. Its bitterness accosted him despite the sugar, and he could barely keep himself from grimacing. Elrohir seemed to be enjoying his like a treat. An acquired taste of the Haradrim, then. After a few sips he could feel the stimulating effect of the drink.

  
“What is this?”

  
“Roasted beans of a bush that grows in these mountains. I’ve used them sparingly until now, but I have hopes of refilling my pack soon.”

  
“Is it a medicine?”

  
Elrohir gave him a strange look. “No, just something people have with breakfast, or in the afternoon. Don’t you drink coffee in the North?”

  
“I have never heard of it. We have milk with breakfast, or watered wine.”

  
Elrohir shot him an incredulous look. “Wine for breakfast? It’s a wonder Northerlings get anything done at all.”

  
Glorfindel emptied his cup more out of politeness than anything else, but he laughed merrily as he did so.


	7. Chapter 7

With his spirits raised by rest and water, Elrohir was eager to join his folk at the Pass of Horns. They now weaved their way through a maze of spectacularly coloured canyons, dry riverbeds and rock formations, the dusty green of the surrounding shrubbery a fascinating contrast against the deep red rock. Ot’s steps loudly echoed through a silence broken only by the whistling wind.

  
After hours of slow, winding progress, Glorfindel felt the sensation of being watched creep up on him. Not daring to risk even the sound of a whisper, he tapped Elrohir’s shoulder and pointedly raised his eyes to the canyon rim above them when the Half-Elf turned around.

  
A lesser Elf would have startled when Elrohir suddenly broke out in song at the top of his lungs, in Haradi with a heavy desert accent. As far as Glorfindel could make out it was a silly ditty about a girl, a camel and what had to be a lot of double entendre. It was eerie, to hear his unmistakably Elven voice singing so foreign a scale and rhythm. Halfway through the second stanza, Elrohir stopped abruptly. He leaned forward in the saddle as he strained to listen how the song was picked up by a man’s voice somewhere on the rock plateau high above them. The other voice, too, dropped the song halfway through a line for Elrohir to pick it up once more without a moment’s hesitation. It was some kind of test, and their observers were now apparently satisfied that Elrohir was indeed one of their own. By the time he had finished, several veiled Haradrim had started to climb down from the plateau. Elrohir made Ot kneel and dismounted, meeting their leader as she approached, water skin in hand.

  
“Eru bless the camel that carried you here.” Her voice was familiar.

  
“And Eru bless the hands that reach me this water,” Elrohir replied.

His smile could have melted glaciers as he took a sip from her waterskin. It was Hamalan, the Gondorian woman from Elrohir’s company they had sent away as they rode to confront the Ringwraith.

Strange that it had been only ten days ago. It felt as if Elrohir and he had been roaming empty desert for an eternity. Glorfindel was surprised by the depth of his own relief at the end of the loneliness and desperate peril of their journey, while Elrohir took it all in stride. It seemed the people of Harad were as hard as their land. Hamalan, too was beaming at Elrohir’s return.

“You are still alive, and you seem very much yourself. Dare I believe that you have succeeded?” she asked, carefully examining Elrohir’s face.

  
His expression became serious. “It is not dead. But Glorfindel has managed to frighten and maim it. It has fled from us screaming. We have not felt its presence since. So yes, we may have succeeded, depending on your definition of success.”

  
Hamalan smiled and turned to Glorfindel with a bow. “This is far more than we could have hoped to achieve without your help. It seems I gravely misjudged you, Master Glorfindel. Please accept my apologies. We are in your debt.”

  
Glorfindel elegantly returned her bow, glad for the ceaseless mistrust and wariness he had been treated with since entering the desert to abate.

“Mistress, you were only sensible not to trust strangers too lightly, and I appreciate your concern for your captain’s safety. No apology is necessary, the matter is forgotten.”

  
Elrohir interrupted as soon as he dared. “Tell me, Hamalan. The Umbarians…?”

  
Hamalan launched into a breathless diatribe. “As bad as we could have hoped, praise Eru! They are three days from the Pass now, and slaughtering their animals already. Amuk and his folk have made large dents in their water supply, though the price was high. He has lost about a third of his people. The occasional supply caravan has slipped through, but nowhere near as many as the army needs. We are reliably informed there is talk of rebellion among the officers. Their High Commander Arnuzîr has orders from Lord Zimrathôn to keep going, but he has already had to subdue a mutiny by the legion from Pellardur.”

  
Elrohir smiled joylessly. “Good news indeed.”

  
The dark mood passed like clouds blown over as Hamalan recalled a far more cheerful tiding. Her voice carried a remembrance of lighter days when she said, “Meanwhile we shall not be remiss in our hospitality. You two look famished. With all these raided caravans we shall soon grow fat on Arnuzîr’s food. Climb up with us, a feast awaits like you haven’t seen since before this infernal campaign began. Master Glorfindel, let me at least offer you this small compensation for your trouble!”

  
Ot was left hobbled in the valley to graze what green shrubbery there was as Hamalan led them clambering up a side canyon. The Haradrim camped in the cool shadow under an overhang where a nameless river had once worn away the red rocks, uncounted years before this became a desert.

  
Elrohir was happily reunited with friends there. If some of the Haradrim thought the presence of the strange Northerner an intrusion they were too polite to stare, at least while they believed Glorfindel would notice. They were a peculiar people, Glorfindel thought. At once brutally savage in war and utterly restrained in their demeanour, veiling their very faces to all but their closest companions. His defeat of the Ringwraith had gained him access to that inner circle, it seemed. The meal was pleasant enough for it. As Elrohir excitedly recounted the Ringwraith’s defeat, the burden of dread and oppressive strangeness the past weeks had laid on him lifted. Glorfindel was glad to finally hear his laugh, a merry sound that sharply reminded Glorfindel of Elladan.

  
Under the circumstances they were served a feast indeed, with fresh bread, dried meat, dates, honey and a delicious concoction of ground chickpeas, spices and olive oil, with watered wine and coffee to drink. As the meal wound to a close, the conversation centered on the advancing Umbarian troops. From the accounts of the Haradrim scouts, they were in dire straits indeed. Horror returned once more as Hamalan spoke of desperate men so mad with thirst they’d slaughter their precious camels to drink their blood. When he heard Elrohir and his companions whoop and cheer over the gruesome tales, Glorfindel could only feel shock and disgust at their rejoicing in such savagery. In his many years as a warrior Glorfindel had dealt more death than he cared to remember, but never meted out prolonged suffering or allowed such a thing under his command. He would have deemed the strategy of the Haradrim Orc-work, if he had not fully understood the desperation of their situation.  
From there they went on to list their own losses. Among the dead were a few names that saddened Elrohir. Glorfindel, too was grieved to learn that his friend Samak had not survived a raid on an Umbarian supply caravan.

  
After the meal, most of the company went to sleep for a few hours. Glorfindel sat in meditation. Heat shimmered in the sun-baked canyon outside, the silent shadows of the sentries guarding them the only movement. Glorfindel recalled Imladris, where snow had to be thick on the ground by now. He thought of Elrond, wondering how his old friend was holding himself under this hope turned to torment that was the long wait for his son.

\---

As dusk fell, Elrohir and Glorfindel took their leave of Hamalan and her warriors. Elrohir rode on to bring word of the Ringwraith’s defeat to the main host of the Haradrim at the Pass of Horns. Now that they were well-fed and safely in friendly territory, the ride under the stars became an almost pleasant experience. Elrohir, too, seemed in a softer mood, humming the watchword song from that morning under his breath as he steered Ot through rocky valleys whose walls became ever steeper and higher towards the heart of the mountains.

  
Just as the sun rose, they entered a wide, sagebrush-speckled valley surrounded by craggy hills, their rocky flanks a dream-like display of bands of red, russet and pale ochre. To the west the valley floor, speckled with sage and cacti, stretched out until it was lost in hazy blue distance. In the east, the land sloped up towards a narrow pass among vertical rock-faces towering like the painted walls of some mad giant’s keep. The endless whistling of the ever-present desert wind was the only sound in the desolate expanse.

  
Glorfindel knew they were watched with many eyes, from hilltops and hidden caves.

  
“These hills have eyes,” he remarked.

  
“Aye, but to us they are friendly. We have come to the Pass of Horns, Glorfindel. This is where the future of all of Harad is about to be decided.”

  
Glorfindel peered into the distance to the west. Even his sharpest of eyes could not yet discern any sign of an approaching army there.

“The army of Umbar is far away still.”

  
“They will come,” Elrohir answered. “There is no other way. Come, let’s go see how the preparations are going.”

With that he turned Ot towards the pass in the east.  
As they approached a welcoming call went up. Seen up close the rock faces were riddled with cave-mouths, a vast system of cool, dark underground caverns that sheltered the army of the Haradrim. Water must once have created these passages, and though they seemed bone-dry now there was at the very edge of smell the promise of moisture in the air blowing up from deeper places. The caves held a priceless treasure: the only untainted well in hundreds of leagues of empty desert. The water they were greeted with was crystal-clear and cold.

  
The keep swarmed with people and camels. Elrohir was clearly familiar with the place. He led Glorfindel by torchlight up many winding passageways. In eons past an underground river had sculpted them from the cliff side's living rock of many colours. As they climbed up through vast chambers and narrow hallways the torch lit fantastical growths of stone shaped like creatures from a fever-dream. In one of the larger caverns Elrohir stopped, and lifted his torch. Glorfindel could not suppress a gasp. The flickering light revealed a fleeing herd of aurochs. Every single animal seemed about to leap from the wall and thunder through the cave, eyes rolling and horns aloft, yet all were painted in red desert pigment by unknown hands.

  
“Who made them?” Glorfindel asked.

  
Elrohir shook his head. “We don’t know. It must have been very long ago, and the world changed since, for these animals are strange to us who live here now. Some say they were painted by the first Men Eru woke. This is a holy place.”

  
On some level Glorfindel had always understood that loss of history was the unavoidable fate of Men, for whom lore could be kept only until the sheer number of transferrals from one generation to the next garbled it beyond all recognition. It was sad to see it with his own eyes, this primitive work of captivating beauty now shorn of its meaning and the name of its creator. He copied Elrohir’s respectful bow, and followed him to what lay beyond, letting the painting fall back into darkness.

  
\----

 

After a steep climb they emerged into blinding sunlight at the very top of the plateau. A settlement of mud-brick dwellings had been erected at that dizzying height. The view from a thousand feet above the valley floor was breathtaking despite the howling, sand-laden wind. From up here Glorfindel could discern the clouds of dust raised by the thousands of marching feet of the approaching Umbarian army. He tried to point them out to Elrohir, who could not yet see. Silhouetted against the red desert in his wind-blown robes and face-veil, the Perdehel had a wild and dangerous beauty, like a drawing from a story-book about the mysteries of Far Harad.

“You have sharp eyes, Glorfindel. I will go to give an account of these past weeks to the council.”

  
After a brief hesitation, in which he seemed to weigh yet again whether Glorfindel warranted such trust, he said, “Come, if you will. Hear all that will be said, if they permit it, so we can benefit from your advice.”

Glorfindel felt a stab of hope at the crack in Elrohir’s deeply guarded attitude towards him.

  
The council, most hastily raised from their daytime beds by news of Elrohir’s return, convened under a sun-shelter on the roof terrace of one of the mud-brick houses, with a sweeping view of the valley below. As Glorfindel had come to expect of the Haradrim there was little pomp or splendour to their council-chamber. They seemed to prefer the timeless beauty of the landscapes surrounding them over man-made objects, reminding Glorfindel of Silvan folk in that respect.

Glorfindel reminisced about the last time he had attended a similar gathering on the eve of battle, the pain of it still fresh after just a long-year. The commanders had met in High King Gil-galad’s tent, richly draped with cloth of gold despite the hardships of Mordor. As slender as a willow-tree, and as out of place King Oropher of Eryn Galen had looked in there in his simple tunic of brown and forest-green, sitting beside the hulking shapes of Ereinion and Elrond in their gold-inlaid full armour. There had been little love lost between the King of the Noldor and his Silvan counterpart. Had Glorfindel known how bitter a fruit would grow from the seeds of discord sown by Ereinion’s lack of forbearance during that session, he may have looked beyond Oropher’s rustic ways and unsuitable gear to see the Silvan King’s shoulders straining under the same weight of responsibility for his people as Ereinion’s. Much sorrow would have been prevented, and Glorfindel would be able to look back to that particular day with something other than shame at his own disdainful attitude.

  
He retreated from memory back to the present. Of today’s battle, at least he could still change the outcome.

  
The leaders of the slave revolt were hard and serious men and women. Signs of leanness and suffering were etched across their faces. Elrohir shared that toughness, Glorfindel mused, a hard-learned acceptance of anything and everything necessary to survive. Amuk was among them, nodding to Glorfindel in recognition.

  
The council listened in silence and Glorfindel suppressed a smile as Elrohir told the story of Glorfindel’s victory over the Ringwraith, its maiming and subsequent flight. After their initial joy at the downfall of an enemy once considered invincible came gnawing doubt.

“What if it returns with a vengeance, what if it brings others like it?”

  
Glorfindel spoke at length, glad of the time he had had to learn to speak Haradi at least passably. These people would not have listened to one speaking Númenórean, the language of their enemy. He told them about the nature of the Ringwraiths, their creation and defeat, and their fear of Light and clean fire of any kind. That knowledge alone might be little protection, but it was at least something to diminish the fear. He caught himself praying to Manwë and all the Valar that the advice he now dispensed would never need to be heeded. The Haradrim were a proud and free people, who abhorred Sauron’s machinations as deeply as did the Eldar and Edain. The Valar had raised no star to guide them, no Land of Gift had been prepared, no mighty Kings would ever muster an army in their defense. Still they made their brave and desperate stand to gain either freedom or death. Secretive, irreverent and cruel as they were, Glorfindel had to grudgingly admit that Elrohir could have wound up in far worse company.

  
Now that Glorfindel had been accepted as an ally whose opinions held merit, talk moved to the battle at hand. From the constant stream of dispatches from their scouts the council knew the Umbarians’ exact position and the degree of their desperation. In the day that passed since Elrohir and Glorfindel had last received news from Hamalan another mutiny had broken out among Arnuzîr’s troops. The deserters were hundreds of fishermen and farmhands from the coastal provinces, drafted for this campaign with promises of riches and glory. They had no idea of the vastness and desolation of the eastern deserts. Now that the full measure of their lord’s ambition was revealed they refused to die of thirst for Zimrathôn’s foolish pride, turning back in droves. Arnuzîr’s countermeasures had been as desperate as they were efficient in keeping his unwilling army marching east: his personal elite troops had left behind hundreds of decapitated bodies littering the desert like oddly shaped rocks.  
The pressure the Haradrim had to exert on Arnuzîr’s supply trains to keep his army thirsty was intense and costly, as was revealed by reports of yet another Haradrim patrol decimated by the heavily guarded water caravan they were meant to intercept.

  
The strategy for the upcoming battle was simple, but sound. The army of Umbar would be lured deep into the seemingly deserted valley by rumours spread among the troops about the presence of water. The keep was to be defended by a deceptively small contingent of Haradrim. Once both the Umbarian commander’s attention and his personal guard were captured by engaging them, the main force of camel-riders would attack by surprise from the hills on both sides, crushing the thirst-weakened Umbarians between hammer and anvil. There were to be be no prisoners, no quarter. The plan was like the Haradrim themselves: efficient, daring and ruthless.

  
Inwardly Glorfindel winced at so much loss of life. Large-scale bloodshed he was intimately familiar with, a string of pain that ran back to the depths of time: Mordor besieged, Eregion fallen, Gondolin sacked, tears unnumbered before Thangorodrim. The tens of thousands who would die here at the Pass weren’t Orcs, but Children of Ilúvatar. Haradrim warriors felled by Umbarian steel. Umbarians killed as much by thirst as by their elusive enemy. In the middle of this orgy of death it would fall to Glorfindel to somehow keep Elrohir alive and unscathed regardless of the battle’s outcome.

 

\---

 

Both Glorfindel’s dark musings and the council were interrupted by the call of a lookout on the adjoining rooftop. She was a young woman of Númenórean descent, her voice both sadly familiar and deeply alien in the Haradi tongue.

“Behold! Umbar is coming!”

The plumes of dust on the western horizon had come within reach of Mortal eyes.

  
Like a nest of fire-ants disturbed, the keep swarmed with people running to and fro. Suddenly the plateau was full of men and women peering into the distance to catch a glimpse of the approaching enemy. Mere moments later, order returned as captains started to muster their companies. Banners were raised as rallying points and the air rang with calls. Elrohir decisively turned towards a green banner with a four-pointed star.

  
Glorfindel quickly pulled him back by the billowing sleeve of his robe. "Where are we going?”

  
“To join our company, the Four Winds. We are to depart at once and move into our attack position on the Northern flank of the valley.”

  
Glorfindel looked him in the eye in search of even a trace of reluctance and found none. It was a hard realisation, that there was nothing he could say in this moment to keep Elrohir from riding to his probable death in a foreign war that should never have concerned him if the world were a just place.

  
“Come!” Holding on to Elrohir’s sleeve Glorfindel dragged him towards the nearest house.

  
Elrohir was half-dragged along, still protesting. "What in Eru’s name is the matter!?”

  
They ducked into a doorway to the darkness beyond. It was a granary, motes of chaff dancing in the beams of sunlight falling between the planks of the rickety door. Glorfindel closed it behind them. Without a word he started to undress, pulling his robes over his head. Instantly the mud walls were speckled with flecks of light as his mail hauberk was revealed. Elrohir stared, perplexed, while Glorfindel bent at the waist to take it off, then thrust it at him, along with the soft leather gambeson he wore underneath.

  
“Quick, put this on!”

  
Elrohir did not reach for it.

  
“Take it!” urged Glorfindel.

  
Elrohir shook his head. “You are mad. I cannot accept such a rich gift from you. Keep it, you will be glad for it before the day is through.”

  
“This is no gift, it is a rescue. I may not be able to keep you from engaging in this madness, but I shall drag you out alive at the end of it or die in the attempt. Now stop contradicting me and put it on!”

  
Glorfindel knew he must have looked ferocious, because one look into his eyes made Elrohir abandon his protests. He pulled his own robes over his head, followed by his tunic and undershirt. His body underneath was hunger-lean. The Haradi sense of modesty clearly did not allow for changing in the presence of others. His face pointedly averted, Elrohir quickly snagged the gambeson from Glorfindel’s hands and turned to face the wall. Bemused by an innocuous everyday occurence in the barracks of Imladris causing offence here, Glorfindel quickly dressed and turned his face away until Elrohir had the gambeson on, then helped him pull the mail over his head. It became invisible under his wide overclothes. Even in these desperate circumstances, Glorfindel marvelled at the lightness of the Noldorin smithcraft. He could only hope it would be sufficient to keep his charge from harm.

  
Elrohir was at a loss for words, and pressed for time. Before bursting through the door he turned back towards Glorfindel.

“I cannot claim to understand what you just did. But know that I will remember it for as long as I live.”

  
Before adding dryly, “Which may be until tomorrow, if Arnuzîr has his way. Come!”

 


	8. Chapter 8

The long line of heavily armed camel riders moved into the hills north of the valley in a silence that weighed like stone. Every warrior in the company was well aware of their absolute need for concealment. One shout could now give the Haradrim’s ambush away to the approaching Umbarians and doom them all. Elrohir directed his company into position using hand signs as he steered Ot up and down the column. Not once did he turn around to look at Glorfindel, but after sharing his saddle for weeks, the Peredhel’s strain and agitation were read well enough from the strange, rigid set of his shoulders.

  
As they lay in ambush hidden in the hills overlooking what was to become the battlefield, the long, silent wait for Amuk’s attack signal began to grind. Hours passed, and now that there was nothing left for Elrohir to do but wait, Glorfindel could tell he was suffering. He was trying to rest, the unfamiliar weight of Glorfindel’s mail on his shoulders making him toss and turn in the sand-hollow they shared.

  
Glorfindel reached out and gently brushed his mind, pleasantly surprised when Elrohir allowed it. What he encountered was a well of agitated confusion. The young Peredhel was afraid, but it was more than simple fear of the upcoming battle. Just weeks ago the idea of being slain had not held the terror it did now. Ever since Glorfindel reawakened the deeply buried memory of his twin it had consumed him like a fever. Elrohir could not, would not accept the idea of his life ending without having seen Elladan one more time. He now remembered brief snaps of his brother, small moments of what little time they’d had together. All that remained of his intimate connection to Elladan was an emptiness, harrowing not because of what it was but what should have been there, like the sight of an amputated limb.

  
Night came and went as the sounds of the approaching army grew louder. It was enough to make even the bravest Haradrim doubt their sanity. Thousands of feet marching to drum beats, stirring clouds of red dust high enough to blot out the fading stars. The grumbling of discontented camels beaten forward by their shouting riders. Most frightening of all were the elephants, living mountains of flesh with battle turrets strapped to their backs, trumpeting dejectedly as they were slowly driven across the valley floor below.

  
Yet the Haradrim were not entirely without hope, be it a cruel one. Even from their high vantage point the desperate suffering of the Umbarians was clear to see. The rhythm of their marching was disjointed. Some companies lacked half their number, and more than a few soldiers dressed as cavalerists were on foot, their camels lost to thirst or perhaps slaughtered for food. Elrohir turned his head towards Glorfindel who lay next to him, flat on his front in the sand to spy over a hill crest undetected, and smiled despite the leaden weight of his dread.

  
Just after sunrise, a relief like water to a thirsting man, Hamalan and the rest of their company arrived. They had been drawn back from guard duty to join the main force. Glorfindel could tell that her familiar presence and calm efficiency were a balm to the agitation Elrohir tried his utmost to hide from his companions.

  
Shortly before noon their long wait mercifully reached its end. Horns and battle cries from the keep could be heard over the din made by the marching army below. The camel-riders formed a phalanx.  
War in Harad held little poetry. There were no grand declarations or rallying cries, not even a last chance for Glorfindel to say something to Elrohir along the lines of "take care" before they poured themselves over the hill crest and into the valley below, silent like a rising flood.

  
Glorfindel could not think about or even register what was happening beyond their section of the battlefield, so were all his mind and will set to protecting Elrohir. The damned Peredhel took too many risks in his eagerness to do as much damage as possible to the Umbarian camel-cavalry before the element of surprise wore off. Elrohir and Ot moved as a single being executing the steps of some deadly, arrhythmical dance. The Umbarians were fearsome fighters, clad in well-forged steel. The battle would have been hopeless but for the agony of thirst that had weakened man and beast, making them far slower than the Haradrim.

  
Whether green field or desert, camel or horse, Man or Orc ultimately made no difference, Glorfindel realised as he deflected what would have been a deadly blow to Elrohir’s back and ran the offending Umbarian through. Not to the screams, the blood, the way gore clung to one’s sleeves to the shoulder after the first few disembowelments.

  
There came a lull in the fighting, a chance to look around. It turned out to be because they had run out of opponents. Elrohir turned to Hamalan on her own camel beside him, and together they laughed, fearless and full of joy. They were both relatively unscathed, and their company had just brought down an entire Umbarian camel-cavalry division. Unfortunately the celebration was not to last. As Glorfindel watched them rejoice, the reckoning arrived.

 

\----

 

The ground itself shook under the enormous feet of the mûmakil. So alien, so mighty they were that the only comparison Glorfindel could think of were the ancient slime-drakes of Morgoth. Like moving mountains they seemed, crowned by cruel metal spikes on teeth, trunks and feet. High above the ground in turrets strapped to their backs rode their masters, driving them on with iron-tipped whips. Atop the tallest one was a turret draped in gold-embroidered red silk. A multitude of signalling flags hung from it on flagpoles, being constantly rearranged as the battle progressed. A tall figure in gold-plated armour could be discerned among many attendants swarming about him like bejewelled beetles. From this elevated lookout Lord Arnuzîr commanded his army.

  
Elrohir and Hamalan moved as one. Instead of turning around and fleeing for the safety of the hills, they charged. Their war camels had been raised in the presence of mûmakil and could be brought to approach them. The company flew towards the monsters, kept alive only by their speed as arrows and javelins launched from the dizzying heights of the creature’s backs bounced off the ground around Ot’s legs. Glorfindel grabbed Elrohir’s shoulder and spun him around in the saddle.

“Stop, you fool! This is madness. Draw back!”

  
The brute force with which Elrohir thrust his intentions into Glorfindel’s mind would have sufficed to command an entire gwéth of Elven warriors. Even the mûmakil had their weakness, it turned out. The eyes first, and then the tendons moving their enormous legs. The Haradrim archers were already launching volleys of arrows at the beasts’ heads. Glorfindel could feel, more than hear Elrohir’s cry of joy as Arnuzîr’s mount was struck blind by many ochre-fletched arrows sticking from its bloodied eye-sockets like a bouquet of bizarre flowers.

  
There was no time for pity or shock at the sight of such cruelty inflicted on a living creature. A call went up from many voices, Elrohir’s among them:

“Cut it down! The legs! Take it down!”

  
Ot brought them ever closer to the maddened, thrashing animal. As they approached both Elrohir and Glorfindel drew their cutting spears. Hamalan did the same beside them. Suddenly there was a rush of wind, like the wings of Manwë’s eagles landing. The enormous head descended towards them, dripping blood and foam from its metal-tipped tusks. There was a scream, from whom Glorfindel could not tell, and then both Hamalan and her camel were gone, sent flying into the air like a handful of dry grass. The mere sight of the sickening crunch with which mount and rider met the hard ground was enough to know that neither would rise again.

  
The darkness of Elrohir’s anger and desperation hit Glorfindel like a tidal wave. For an instant the Peredhel sat frozen, Ot wildly galloping without his rider’s direction. At the full unguarded extent of Elrohir’s sorrow Glorfindel briefly wondered what, exactly Hamalan had been to him. His alarming line of thought was cut short when Elrohir emerged from his initial shock feeling naught but bitter hate. There was a thought blooming in his mind, another way than the unreachable, flailing legs to bring down the commander of Umbar. As they thundered past the animal’s flank he suddenly stood in the saddle and jumped.

  
Of course. The cinch. It held the whole battle turret fast to the animal’s back. Several other Haradrim had come to the same conclusion and were hauling themselves up to carve at the knotted cable of leather reinforced with iron. It did come apart, but far too slowly. As Glorfindel watched the cutters were picked off one by one by volleys of Umbarian arrows. Elrohir was left alone up there, saved from the same fate by Glorfindel’s mail, hanging on for dear life with his legs as both his hands sawed frantically.

  
Glorfindel reached out his mind to the structure of the metal wire itself, already screaming and stretching, and sang.


	9. Chapter 9

Until the day Arda would end and the fëar of the Elves were to be remade Glorfindel would remember the moments that followed, stretched into eternity.

The cinch broke, the release of its tension making it snap the air like a mighty whip as the battle turret slid off the mûmakil’s back. There was nothing left for Elrohir to hold on to. As Glorfindel looked on in horror the Peredhel was pulled down by the falling debris and disappeared from sight in the cloud of red dust thrown up by its crash.

Then finally battle-rage possessed him, the familiar blend of anger and urgency that had descended on Glorfindel many times before in close combat. Whoever dared to stand between him and Elrohir, it would be the last thing they ever did.

  
Despite their fall there still was hard fighting to be done against the survivors of Arnuzîr’s retinue, but they were no match for Glorfindel.

  
The turret had been light, made of silk and bamboo. Elrohir had to lie somewhere under the wrecked remains of the fallen tower, and he was not dead yet. The smallest of flames still burned within the Peredhel at the very edge of Glorfindel’s perception. He pulled Hadhafang from the throat of the last Umbarian, not even sparing a glance for the richly adorned corpse that had to be Arnuzîr himself lying at his feet. As Glorfindel dug feverishly among the wreckage hope bloomed hotly within him when he felt Elrohir’s mind stir. There! A piece of Haradi desert-coloured cotton just visible underneath a heap of bamboo beams. With the strength of the desperate Glorfindel lifted the whole tangle, throwing it aside like a handful of twigs. He fell to his knees beside the still figure he uncovered. Elrohir moaned as the harsh afternoon light hit his sore eyes. One side of his face was an unrecognizable mass of swelling and congealed blood where a beam had struck him.

  
Giddy with relief Glorfindel made a note to lecture him extensively on the necessity of wearing helmets in battle, much later on some quieter and more mundane occasion. Glorfindel drew his hands across Elrohir’s body, immensely grateful to find nothing more sinister than a few broken ribs. The young fool had been knocked out cold, but he would live.

  
Glorfindel cradled the still form in his arms and started searching for a camel. There was no more need to concern himself with the Umbarians, it seemed. The Haradrim had paid the bloody price of their victory in full, but they had won.

 

\----

 

The only description befitting the situation Glorfindel found when he rode into the keep was utter chaos. What few healers there were among the Haradrim had set up a meager field hospital in one of the lower passages, only to find themselves completely overrun with wounded fighters staggering in or being carried by their agitated comrades. The cave was alive with various screams, moans and barked orders. The pandemonium bore no resemblance to the strict organisation of a well-supplied Noldorin healers’ ward, but the stench of battlefield medicine assaulting Glorfindel’s nostrils was familiar nonetheless. As he inhaled the metallic tang of blood overlaying the unmistakable putrid smell of gut wounds, his mind revolted against the very idea of Elrohir being treated amidst this dangerous, destitute mess.

  
Glorfindel carried Elrohir right past the harrowing scene to find their packs in one of the upper galleries. It was strange to see their belongings just as they left them behind less than a day ago. The sight of the saddlebags made Glorfindel briefly wonder what had become of Ot, who had served his master so bravely before being abandoned to whatever fate had befallen him amidst the raging battle.

  
Glorfindel laid Elrohir down beside their packs. Thanks to Elrond’s foresight it contained everything he’d need to take care of him. First he washed the matted blood and sand off Elrohir’s face with clean water. Its cool touch briefly brought him around. The one eye that wasn’t hidden under a dark blue mass of swollen tissue opened, clouded with pain and confusion, his hands weakly pushing Glorfindel’s away.

  
Glorfindel’s voice was a gentle whisper, all kindness. “Peace my friend. All is well now. I will make this better, but you need not be aware of it. Sleep.”

  
Elrohir sighed, turning his face into the hand that cupped it as he gave in to the beckoning darkness of spell-induced sleep. Only then did Glorfindel realise he had spoken Sindarin.

  
What remained to be done now was delicate work. Glorfindel was glad for the opportunity to busy his hands and gather his thoughts. First he pulled the blood-soaked ruin of Elrohir’s clothes and the mail hauberk off over his head and dressed him in a reasonably clean change of clothes from his pack. Then he set to work on the head wound. With endless care he pried apart the now grotesquely swollen eyelids, cleaning and briefly examining the eye underneath to find it mercifully unscathed. Most of the blood came from a long cut in Elrohir’s scalp, which he meticulously sutured with fine silk thread.

There were several breaks in the delicate bones of the skull. Thankfully none of them would have required Elrond’s surgical skills. Glorfindel laid his hands on the broken face, feeling the warm, pulsating course of arteries and veins, the small, lightning-bright tinkling of every tiny nerve beneath his fingers. The fractures formed a jangling dissonant in the song that was Elrohir, but Glorfindel found a far more concerning matter. The brain itself had been bruised and was swelling within the tight confines of the skull. It seemed Elrohir’s death had not been averted yet. Glorfindel’s voice did not waver as he started to weave his response. He sang of wholeness, and healing, and even as he chanted he could feel the damaged tissues starting to knit together. When his song had run its course Glorfindel rose and briefly felt light-headed, so much of his own strength had he poured into the singing. It took him a few moments to recover. Soon Elrohir was resting comfortably, covered in a camel-hair blanket with his head elevated on a makeshift cushion of saddlebags. All he needed now was the stillness of sleep.

  
The night that followed was long and harrowing. From the lower levels sounded cries of pain grief and despair. Glorfindel was torn asunder by the suffering of the Haradrim. He could barely restrain himself from going down to the field hospital to lend what aid he might. Then his eyes came to rest on Elrohir’s still form. His injuries required constant watching. Leaving Elrond’s wounded son alone to go to the aid of others, only to return to Elrohir having a seizure or choking to death on his own vomit was unconscionable. His was a hard and bitter choice, just as it had been in wars long past. He could not help all those in need, at least not without abandoning the task he had sworn to fulfill. Once more the choosing left Glorfindel feeling stained and diminished.

  
After sunset the remnant of the Haradrim took up a rhythmic chant, probably in honour of their dead, that was kept up throughout the night. A few times people carrying torches wandered into the pitch-dark gallery where Elrohir slept and Glorfindel sat motionless like a sentinel carved from the red stone of the mountain itself. Usually they were in search of belongings, sometimes of missing friends. Once, a visitor came in the dark. It was a boy not much older than fifteen, simply lost and wandering blindly in a daze of grief. For him, Glorfindel sang to lift what he could of the fog of horror and desperation shrouding his mind. He descended back to the main host with a purpose, at least.

  
Elrohir was kept asleep through it all, undisturbed by dreams or pain. When a pale, grey light filtering down from the cave mouth on the plateau enabled Glorfindel to see his hands in front of his face once more, he released his hold on Elrohir’s mind, letting it drift upwards to consciousness. It took another hour for him to come to, the onslaught of pain drawing his mind awake despite his exhaustion. Glorfindel listened as his breathing became fast and irregular until his good eye opened. Disoriented by the reddish twilight of the cave, Elrohir tried to make sense of the world once more. He brusquely sat up, seeming panicked and unsure of where he was and with who. Glorfindel could feel the echoes of a wave of blinding pain and nausea brought on by the movement as Elrohir retched. Glorfindel fetched a pail, then helped him lie back down with as little jostling as possible, whispering reassuring words in Haradi.

  
At least Elrohir was properly awake now, staring intently at Glorfindel with fear in his gaze. His voice was so hoarse and raspy he had to repeat himself twice and switch to Númenórean before Glorfindel understood.

“Are we under siege?”

  
Glorfindel hurried to allay this particular fear. “As far as I know not a single Umbarian was left alive out there.”

  
“Then why am I hearing the chant of despair? How many have we lost?!”

  
There was no comfortable way to say such things. Glorfindel wasn’t sure whether it would be crueler for Elrohir to remember the gruesome deaths of so many of his comrades, or for the memories to be lost to his injury and the realisation endured a second time.

  
“I do not know the exact number. I don’t believe anyone does at this point in time. But many.”

  
Pain flitted across Elrohir’s face. It seemed he did remember the battle, or parts of it at least. Glorfindel did not have the heart to mention Hamalan.

  
“Where is Amuk?” Elrohir was trying to sit up once more.

  
Glorfindel quickly laid a hand on his shoulder to keep him down, lest they need the pail again. “I do not know. If you promise me to stay here and rest I will go down and find out for you.”

  
Elrohir nodded, wincing from the stab of pain upon moving his head.

  
Glorfindel rose to find a waterskin, unstoppered it and pressed the spout into Elrohir’s hand. “Here, you must be thirsty. Take small sips. Do not even think about getting up!” He turned to leave in search of news.

  
“Glorfindel?” Elrohir’s voice sounded shaken, and afraid. “Did I lose my eye?”

  
Glorfindel knelt beside him once more and smiled. “Fear not. It’s under there somewhere, and bound to turn up again one of these days.”

  
Even if Elrohir’s smile of relief was a brave facade, at least it did something to lift Glorfindel’s spirits.


	10. Chapter 10

Glorfindel’s arrival in the crowded lower passages caused nothing short of a sensation, a ray of light amidst sorrow so heavy it weighed down even the good-natured Elf.

  
The Haradrim army had been decimated. Throughout the night the few uninjured warriors who remained had searched the battlefield for wounded survivors by torchlight. Any Haradrim they found were carried to the keep, Umbarians executed where they lay. Given the sheer numbers, the Haradrim had no hope of carrying the bodies of their own dead off the battlefield or burying them. During the night it had been decided to simply round up what camels could be found roaming the battlefield and leave everything else. Glorfindel thought to suggest a pyre, but held his tongue when he realized the desert held nothing for them to burn.

  
For once Glorfindel was immensely grateful for the incessant whistling wind that blew over the Pass. If not for the constant stream of fresh air they would have had to abandon the keep to escape the eye-watering stench of decomposing bodies and the legions of carrion-flies. Even with no one left alive there was still a din on the battlefield. Swarms of vultures were squawking over their prizes and in the distance several packs of wild dogs had set to feasting. Already the wounded Haradrim were being moved to the top of the plateau to distance them from the proximity of so much death.

  
To Glorfindel’s surprise and delight Amuk had indeed survived and was firmly in charge of the goings-on. When the chieftain of the Haradrim laid eyes on the Elf he, too, received a pleasant shock. It turned out that in the confusion that followed the battle, Glorfindel and Elrohir had been presumed dead along with most of the company of the Four Winds. There were a few survivors whose faces Glorfindel did recognize from the meal they had shared in Hamalan’s camp, two days and an eternity ago.

  
Their joy at hearing of Elrohir’s survival was obvious, as was their concern for him. They would not be appeased until Glorfindel took them to see their friend and his injuries with their own eyes. Glorfindel kept the visit brief. Elrohir was in too much pain to even be glad to see them. Afterwards he lay still with his eye closed, not sleeping but suspended in a private bubble of misery.  
He did look up when Glorfindel’s voice sounded through the cave, deep and melodious. Despite the jarring way the Mortal language broke the meter of the ann-tennath, Glorfindel improvised the lines of the Lay of Leithian in Númenórean so Elrohir would understand the words and be uplifted by them.

 

_“The leaves were long, the grass was green,_   
_The hemlock-umbels tall and fair_   
_And in the glade a light was seen_   
_Of stars in shadow shimmering._   
_Tinúviel was dancing there_   
_To music of a pipe unseen,_   
_And light of stars was in her hair,_   
_And in her raiment glimmering ...“_

Elrohir could not possibly have understood all of the northern lay, but when the song came to a close the oppressive weight of his pain and sorrow seemed lifted somewhat. In his unguarded mind was Elladan’s face, and a sweet kind of longing for half-forgotten things, the memory of them just beyond his grasp. Once more Glorfindel sent him sleep, and Elrohir allowed tiredness, heavy beyond resisting, to pull him down into the dark.

 

\----

 

By the third day Glorfindel’s arts of healing and Elrohir’s innate stubbornness had him well on the mend. The dark blue of his bruises had started to lighten into greenish yellow. His eye slowly reappeared as the swelling went down. As his body became stronger, his restlessness increased. He seemed given to brooding, the long hours of forced immobility setting his mind spinning in circles  like a water-wheel. Despite Glorfindel’s frequent attempts at drawing him into conversation he remained quiet, standoffish even at times. Once he was able to stand up and take a few steps without vertigo bringing him down, he insisted they move to the top of the plateau.

  
Glorfindel carefully walked alongside Elrohir after the arm he had offered for support was summarily refused. Elrohir was clutching it before they had even left the cave, his breaths coming in small, halting gasps. When they emerged into the white-hot midday sunlight above Glorfindel was half-dragging, half-carrying him, both his good eye and the swollen one tightly shut.

  
Despite his physical pain the desert and the the open sky seemed to lift Elrohir’s spirits. Once seated comfortably, shielded from the whipping sand-laden wind with his back against one of the mud-brick walls of the storerooms, he opened his eyes and deeply breathed the crisp air with the first ghost of a smile Glorfindel had seen of him since the days before the battle.

  
The company of Elrohir’s friends was a decidedly mixed blessing. While he did seem glad for their companionship they were also a constant reminder of the ones that were lost. The fact that even now Elrohir had not spoken Hamalan’s name once was concerning to say the least. The sweeping views the plateau offered of the horrors in the valley below did not help either, in Glorfindel’s opinion.

  
There was a small ray of light in so much grief when they learned that Ot was among the camels that had been rounded up from the battlefield. Elrohir insisted on going to see him. Glorfindel allowed him to walk all the way down to the camel pens despite needing to hold himself up against the wall every few steps, only to set his mind on happier tracks. The plan succeeded, but the relief of Elrohir’s gloom was only as brief as their short visit to his loyal mount. Faced with the problem of climbing back up, to which he clearly hadn’t given a thought beforehand, Elrohir had to admit defeat. In one of the lower passages his knees buckled and he sank down with his back against the rough wall.

  
After expanding Glorfindel’s knowledge of the many interesting profanities endemic to the Haradi language he rested his head on his knees and sat stock-still, his eyes closed as he battled his crippling dizziness.

  
Glorfindel gave him a few moments, then tried to take his arm so he might help him up.

  
“Leave me be!”

Elrohir’s voice trembled with far more than mere annoyance at his own helplessness. He buried his face in his hands.

  
Glorfindel knelt down in front of him.

“Elrohir, I am sorry. For the very fact that you are in this situation, for the loss of your friends, for the way my news has burdened you even more. I am truly sorry.”

  
There was no response except the sound of swallowing and deep breaths drawn for composure. When Elrohir looked up his eyes were shiny and his voice hoarse.

“As am I. You have traveled so far, and willingly let yourself be drawn into this disaster on my behalf. If not for you I would have been dead twice over by now.”

  
Glorfindel had not planned to have this particular conversation seated on the floor of a public walkway but it was as good an opportunity as he was likely to get.

  
“Let me take you home. You have more than fulfilled your obligations towards the Haradrim. Further delay will only bring more pain, both to you and those at home who count the days awaiting your return.”

  
Elrohir gasped as he fought to hold back tears. In all the time Glorfindel had known him he had never looked this vulnerable and defenseless, suddenly devoid of the sturdy, warrior-like appearance afforded by his Mannish heritage, leaving only a lost, forty-year old elfling. Glorfindel felt his heart ache with grief for so much senseless pain. If this had been Elladan injured and mourning, he would have pulled the child into his arms to let him cry his fill. He knew Elrohir well enough by now to predict that attempts at closeness would only upset him further. For long moments they sat side by side on the sand-covered cave floor, a foot of empty air and an abyss between them.

  
“I don’t know.” Elrohir finally whispered, looking Glorfindel in the eye with a searching gaze. “What do you want with me, in the cold snow-lands where the stars are strange?”

  
“I promised your family that I would bring you home. There is no ulterior motive. You may not remember Imladris, but take it from me that you will find your welcome there anything but cold and strange.”

  
During one of their long nights in the saddle, Glorfindel had tried to explain to Elrohir where Imladris might be found. It had been a difficult exercise given the Peredhel’s complete ignorance of the world north of the river Poros. Gondor he considered a nebulous and almost mythical realm. The question of what might lie to the north of it seemed never to have occurred to him. Here be dragons, Glorfindel thought wryly, recalling the whimsical writing on Erestor’s nearly blank maps of Far Harad. The very notion of travelling to such alien places, never to return to the deserts he knew, was terrifying Elrohir. Glorfindel now regretted the tales he had spun in their hours of starlit riding. He had spoken of ice and snow, long winter nights, the soft grey light of northern days and the wonder of bare branches and fallen leaves renewed in spring. Intended to entice and entertain, they only served to further distress Elrohir in his current state of darkness.

  
For a moment Glorfindel was convinced that Elrohir would refuse, that even a sworn oath and the threat of the Ringwraith’s possible return would not suffice to lure him back to a home he could not remember. He reached out to Elrohir’s mind and found his answer, burning like a signal-fire in the night. Elladan. The agony of missing his twin had become unbearable. Elrohir would give in to that pain, rather than to Glorfindel. It was not a comfortable thought, or a proud one, but Harad’s harshness left no room for such luxuries as kindness or honour.

  
Elrohir silently nodded his assent, to Glorfindel’s immense relief. “What do we do now?”

  
Glorfindel couldn’t help but smile. “I will help you get back up to begin with. Take your time to say your goodbyes, at least until you feel well enough to ride. Then we go West, to the coast. I have friends there who will bring us North.”

  
That had been a mistake. At the mention of travelling to the coast, into Umbar, the blood drained from Elrohir’s face, his openness disappearing with it like spring turning to sudden winter.

  
“I am a wanted man in Umbar. Now even more so than when I was there last. For me to go there is suicide.”

  
“Rest assured that I will keep you safely disguised.”

  
Elrohir sat up straight now, buoyed by sheer terror.

  
“I have a hard time believing you are truly as old as you claim, for all your naivety. I do not have a forgettable face, Glorfindel. If I stick as much as the tip of my nose over the border with Umbar I’ll end up nailed to three different city gates. Eventually, that is, when Lord Zimrathôn is done pulling all he wants to know about Harad’s defenses from me.”

  
He looked at Glorfindel with eyes so guarded there was hardly any light left in them, his back rigid as steel.

“Unless that is what you are after. As you doubtlessly know I am worth my weight in silver, for the one who brings me in alive. A considerable sum, even if the Umbarians should swindle you by lopping off some of my heavier parts before paying out. Zimrathôn might make you a rich man, and me a dead one.”

  
For the first time in many long-years Glorfindel was struck dumb. Not once in either of his lives had he been accused of treason. His loyalty and the strength of his word were all his honour, and never had the slightest shadow of doubt been cast upon them. He was aware that he had every right to a display of righteous outrage, but the absurdity of the allegation prevented him from feeling even a shred of anger towards the one who uttered it. He was relieved by how measured his voice came out when he finally managed an answer.

“I am first to admit that Elves have harbored the darkest of traitors, cruel and vindictive enough to deliver their people and their King into the hands of the Black Foe himself. Two ages of the world have passed and still we sing of them, bitter songs that will never allow us to forget. Nevertheless, not once have I heard of an Elf who sank to those depths for as mean a thing as silver.”

He looked Elrohir in the eyes. “The shadow of grief weighs heavily on your mind. Dark are its counsels and the specters it casts, and they are far from the truth. Pay them no heed. In your heart you know it is not so.”

  
Elrohir remained silent as he hauled himself up against the gritty, many-layered stone of the cave wall.

  
Even without their quarrel the walk back up to the plateau would have been an ordeal. Judging from Elrohir’s cold aloofness he would rather have spent the night alone in the camel pens had Glorfindel not insisted they go back up together. He had no choice but to allow Glorfindel to support him as he slowly stumbled his way up through the cool darkness of the winding passageways. Glorfindel nearly carried him like a dead weight for the last part, awkwardly holding their torch aloft with his other hand, driving leaping shadows before them as they passed.

  
In the days that followed they had several conversations about the way North. They all began and ended with Elrohir’s point-blank refusal to even consider travelling anywhere near the coast. With the benefit of hindsight Glorfindel often told himself that he should have foreseen what the Peredhel was going to do. Maybe it was naivety that deceived him, maybe wishful thinking. Glorfindel liked to believe that betrayal was so alien to his very nature that even in his second life he seemed unable to fully grasp its winding ways.

Meanwhile the keep’s population was dwindling. Many of the wounded were beyond help despite Glorfindel’s best efforts. As soon as the injured friends they attended to were either healed or laid to rest most Haradrim chose to leave the place of sadness behind and revert to the hard-won freedom of their nomadic ways.

  
Elrohir watched each company depart with a sorrow that nearly made Glorfindel falter in his mission. The knowledge that each goodbye he now said would be utterly permanent was yet another wound. His longing for the open desert, away from the constant reminders of the horrors of battle was obvious even without reading his mind. Between that longing and his yearning for Elladan, Elrohir was torn in two like a hare between two snarling wolves.

He became ever more silent and withdrawn, his sea-grey eyes over-large in the pale oval of his face. Glorfindel started to worry about him in earnest, fearing the weight of all this misery combined might be enough to break his spirit away from his body. He gently tried to touch Elrohir’s mind, but was turned away every time.

  
From the moment Elrohir could be safely left alone Glorfindel had spent many hours in the the open tents of the waning field hospital assisting the Haradrim healers. There came a day when the Elf was asked to attend to a dying woman. She had suffered for nearly two weeks after being speared through the gut. At first she held up well, kindling a false hope in both healers and her comrades. The past days her fever had risen as her pale face wasted away, and the cloying smell of rot emanating from her soiled bandages left no trace of doubt that she would inevitably succumb to her injuries. In their grief her company begged the Elf to if not heal her, then at least ease the torture that was her passing. Glorfindel possessed the skill to painlessly snuff out the very spark he had so often kindled back to brightness, but the near inconceivable weight of such an act made him loathe to perform it save in utmost need. To be sure, he subjected the deliriant woman to yet another painful examination before giving in to her relatives’ begging. When the deed was done he felt he could not in good conscience turn away from her burial rites.

  
As was their wont in joy and grief, the Haradrim sang to the alien rhythm of their battle drums as they laid her to rest under a simple mound of stones, her face towards the sunrise. The words of the funeral song struck Glorfindel to his core. It was a defiant celebration of the Gift of Men, of their joyful expectation of ultimate freedom beyond the circles of Arda Marred, where neither Vala nor Morgoth held sway. After the crowd had dispersed Glorfindel lingered long beside her grave, wondering in awe and melancholy where the strange fate of her people might have taken her.

  
When Glorfindel returned to the tent he shared with Elrohir his hair stood on end as soon as he opened the tent flap. Inside he found nothing but his own belongings. He ran down to the camel pens, already knowing he would be too late. Ot was gone. Swearing like an Orc, Glorfindel dashed into the blinding sunlight outside to find no trace of the camel or his rider.

  
As Glorfindel stood outside the keep straining his eyes, distress and anger battling for precedence, Amuk came out after him with Elrohir’s message. The man did not even seem to fully grasp why Glorfindel was so agitated over the Peredhel’s stealthy departure. In times of peace the Haradrim went as they pleased within their vast, trackless desert, choosing their way and their companions freely. Elrohir had wanted to be alone to gather his thoughts, Amuk said. Surely Glorfindel did not begrudge him that, after all that had come to pass? He’d undoubtedly turn up again when he was good and ready. At Glorfindel’s overriding concern that Elrohir might get himself killed or worse Amuk was even more bemused. A Haradrim lived and breathed the desert like a fish did water. With both the Ringwraith and Umbar defeated, these lands had never been safer. Elrohir had wanted Glorfindel to know that he would travel due North, just like he promised.

  
Glorfindel stormed up to the plateau once more to look out on the vastness and desolation that was Harad. Elrohir must have already disappeared in the network of canyons and gullies of the desert mountains. There was no trace of him or Ot, and no signs of movement among the decaying bodies on the plain.

  
With a sinking feeling Glorfindel considered the miles upon miles of unfathomably empty wilderness Elrohir and he had covered on their way to the Pass. As much as he wanted to ride out and search it for Elrohir, he knew that attempting to do so would amount to pointlessly taking his own life. The accursed Peredhel had clearly understood that as well as Glorfindel did. There was no choice but to carefully retrace the steps of Arnuzîr’s army due West and meet with Círdan.

  
Glorfindel did not doubt for a moment that Elrohir would indeed be travelling North. His preoccupation with seeing Elladan had bordered on the obsessive. At some point his secretive journey would inevitably lead him out of the desert and into Gondor. The Elves would be waiting.

 


End file.
